


Boom!

by FassyAnon



Category: American Actor RPF, Call of Duty commercial, Chris Evans - Fandom
Genre: Amnesia, Call of Duty commercial - Freeform, Death, Discussion of Violence, Espionage, Explosions, F/M, Intrigue, Kissing, Mystery, Sex, attempted coup in another country, gunfire, original story based on, then some actual violence, there are characters who die, vile thoughts, what did she do to make someone want to kidnap her?, who is after Becca?, why can't she remember her husband?, why is she having crazy dreams?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-07-29 18:51:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 66,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7695457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FassyAnon/pseuds/FassyAnon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a love story. It's a mystery. There's some espionage and some intrigue. There are some explosions and gunfire. There might even be a touch of amnesia. Any more than that and I just might give the story away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Boom!

Pop! Pop! Boom BOOM! **BOOM!**

Becca wasn’t quite sure how she’d wound up on the floor. One minute, she was in the arms of some unknown stranger, some nameless and faceless man, his body covering hers and about to do unspeakable, dirty things to her, and the next she was on the floor.

BOOM!

That was when she realized there was some sort of artillery _what the fuck!_  that was going off outside her room.

What the hell was going on!

She heard several more explosions and they sounded like they were getting closer. Becca scrambled to the dresser, pulling out the first thing she found and got dressed before crawling to the closet and donning her work boots. She had dressed quickly, and just in time. She heard a commotion right outside her door just before-

BOOM!

The concussion shattered her windows and splintered her door as she dropped to the floor, her bed partly protecting her from the flying glass and shrapnel. Becca was in a daze, unable to really hear and temporarily blinded from the flash. She felt someone grab her arm and she was half carried, half dragged from her room. Not knowing who he was, she fought back, dropping to the ground and throwing him off-balance. He fell on her right as gunfire erupted all around them.

Turns out, she’d inadvertently saved his life.

He covered her with his body as bullets flew all around them, slamming into the walls, the ceiling, every surface. As rough chunks of drywall flew about, Becca tucked herself under him as best as she could. It took her a moment, but she became aware that he was now purposefully covering her body, one of his gloved hands doing its best to shield her from the debris.

Becca had a sense of déjà vu, feeling his hard body on top of hers. Startled, she almost missed his enquiry.

“Are you hit anywhere? Are you okay?” He was almost yelling, given the level of noise bombarding them. With a quickness, she felt him surround her, cover her even more just before-

Boom! BOOM! **BOOM!**

There was a break in the shelling and Becca heard-

“Go for Liberty.” He paused, obviously straining to hear something before continuing. “I have the asset. We’re at location Bravo and taking heavy fire! We’re going to need reinforcements.” Whoever was on the other end did not give him an answer he wanted to hear. “No! No we need it now! They have us pinned down!” Becca heard him muttering something about ‘this isn’t some video game we’re in’ before he answered, “extraction point Whiskey, roger that. Will contact when-”

Another explosion caused the two to cling to each other, briefly, before he attempted to contact command again. That’s when he realized he couldn’t get through. He swore before addressing Becca.

“Look, I think we need to get you out of here. We’ve gotta get you to the extraction-”

“Who the hell are you!?”

“Later. I need to get you out of here now. As soon as I roll off, get to the end of that hallway and take a left, follow it until the end and take a right. Take the first hallway on the right and I’ll meet you there.”

“But I don’t under-”

“BECCA! Just do it!”

Startled that he knew her name, she stopped her questioning and memorized his face just before he rolled off her.

Hell, she’d never forget his face. His steely blue eyes that got lighter close to the pupil; his broad forehead, the creases made more pronounced by the grime and dust; his perfectly chiseled jaw that had a week or two’s worth of growth and _how would that feel on her delicate parts_ , Becca wondered.

She scrambled to her feet and ran, keeping as low to the ground as she could. She hit the end of the hallway as she heard gunfire erupt and headed left. As she ran the sounds of the fighting faded _end of the hall, take a right_ and then stopped. The hallways were dark and she didn’t know the place all that well, so she ran with her hand on the wall and when she felt the hallway, she stopped and ducked in, hunkering down with her back to the wall, and covered her head with her arms. She needed to calm herself as best as she could.

It was several minutes before he put his hand on her shoulder to stir her.

“Who the hell are you? What is going on, and how the hell do you know my name?”

“Are you hurt?”

“Seriously, who are you!”

“Charlie Alpha Papa.”

“How do you- what-” Becca shook her head, trying to come to terms with the fact that he knew her code but needing to shake off her confusion at the same time. “Uh, okay.” She closed her eyes and took a breath before continuing. “Where are we going?”

“We need to get you out of here. First, are you okay? Did you get hurt back there?”

“No, no I’m fine. Where are you taking me?”

“Just stay on my six, I’ll get you out of here. I’ll keep you safe.”

Liberty, as Becca had come to think of him, moved past her as she was still trying to remember what a ‘six’ was. He turned after a few steps down the hallway and saw she was as he’d left her.

“Becca!”

His commanding voice broke through her escalating panic and she moved to follow him.

Once they exited the building, Becca lost track of the time. It was nothing but turns and twists and backtracking and ducking into alcoves and waiting for patrols to pass before moving on. The sun, lower in the horizon, told her it had been a long day. During that whole time, Becca had been behind this man she could only think of as ‘Liberty’. As she stared at his back and ass and thighs – and you wouldn’t hear her complain – she wondered who he was and why he’d been sent to get her. She tried to start a conversation with him several times, but he always shushed her, putting his gloved finger up to his perfect lips. She started to have daydreams about those fingers and what they might do to her. _And those lips…_

They made their way down a shelled street, not having seen enemy troops for the past 30-ish minutes when he pulled up and motioned Becca to the side. She found a doorway and was quickly propelled through it as he hissed “get down! Get Down!”

She didn’t move fast enough for him. He grabbed her by the waist and manhandled her to the back of the storefront, behind the pockmarked counter.

“Take this.” He was holding a gun up to her and when he saw her face, he made some sort of change to the weapon. “Safety’s off. Point. Hold it with both hands, pull the trigger. If I’m the one coming back in, you’ll hear me say ‘Liberty’. Shoot anyone else who approaches you.” And he was gone.

Everything suddenly still and quiet, Becca looked around, trying to control her breathing. She heard the crunch of footsteps out on the street and looked for a place to hide. There was a kneehole, under the register, and she made her way on her hands and knees, suppressing the urge to shout in pain as the debris cut into her. She crouched down, getting under, her back against the wall, and shoved as far out of the line of sight as possible. She did what she could to control her breathing.

Then she started panicking.

Someone had walked into the store. She closed her eyes and concentrated, hoping to hear ‘Liberty’. As they walked towards the counter, Becca held the gun in front of her, emulating any number of people from any number of movies. The gun was a lot heavier than anyone ever let on.

The head of a shadow appeared on the floor, looming closer as she heard the footsteps, treading closer to her hiding spot. Becca was shaking so hard she was sure that her bones were rattling and she would drop the gun.

“I know you are under there. Come out now.” The English was heavily accented and she knew she had moments to figure out what to do.

“Come on, I don’t have all day.”

Her plan of attack was simple: comply. Becca slowly edged her head out and glanced up, needing to understand what she faced. When she saw the evil grin on his face, she froze. He grabbed her by her hair and hauled her out from under the counter. He didn’t see the gun in her hand. He did feel it under his chin a moment before she pulled the trigger. As her would-be captor fell back to the floor, Becca dove for the space under the counter, the loud report from the gun still ringing in her ears. She crawled into the corner and hid as best as she could.

The ringing finally stopped and it wasn’t soon after that she heard more footsteps and was terrified that she had someone else to confront. She plastered herself to the corner under the register, her face hidden.

“Liberty.” He came around the counter and saw the man, apparently dead on the floor. “Becca, Liberty! Where are you?” There was an urgency to his voice. He stooped to check on the man’s condition and he caught Becca, hiding. “Becca!” Her head turned only enough for him to catch the tremor in her jaw. He saw the gun on the floor at her feet and knew he could get her out without being shot. He picked her up and held her for a few moments before setting her on her feet. There were enemy combatants everywhere and he needed her to be under her own steam. They’d never get out alive if he had to carry her. They still had too far to go.

He softened his voice, hoping to break through “Becca?” He took off one of his gloves and wiped her face. She was dusty and grimy from all the shelling and explosions. “Come on, Becca, you’ll be okay. It couldn’t be helped. You did what you had to do to save yourself. I need you to pull yourself together. We’ve got to get out of here. Can you walk?”

Becca took a couple of deep breaths, craving more of the feel of him, and got herself under control. “Yes, I can manage. Lead the way.”

They left the storefront and were on the street for no more than 30 seconds before they heard more people approaching and ducked into the nearest building. He led her to the back of the store, hoping to find someplace to hide. With no options, they ducked behind the counter.

Becca had tears streaming down her cheeks and he knew that in a moment she’d be in a heap on the floor. He grabbed her and pulled her onto his lap, wanting her to snap out of it but also understanding. She probably hadn’t ever killed anyone before.

“It’s okay, Becca. Come on.” He rocked her, trying to get her to calm down, to quiet down. The problem was, she was getting louder. He knew he had to distract her, do something to keep her from spiraling out of control. Her tremors were increasing and she was fighting it with all her might, but she was losing the battle.

He was desperate.

Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Soft, full lips; quickening breath; tongues seeking and stroking and caressing. He surprised both of them when he kissed her.

He surprised himself even more when he went back in for seconds. And thirds. Each kiss deeper, more intimate.

He spent all day, every day with men, and some women, who were hard, resistant, rough-and-tumble types. He rarely had a call to be around someone soft, and open, and willing. And Becca was proving to be very willing.

He lay her on the floor, moving some debris out of the way before covering her body with his and kissing her again. He got lost in the softness of her lips, even after a day of being in harsh conditions. He took his time, getting to know her reactions as he nibbled on her lower lip, sucking it into his mouth as he explored her with his teeth and tongue. He had to adjust his body as he responded to her.

She felt his subtle movement as he shifted his hips.

Becca was not as subtle as she parted her legs and pressed her hips up into him, welcoming him against her. She was able to pull her arms out from between them and reached up and grabbed the back of his head. She wanted him to know, in no uncertain terms, that she wanted him. Now. She’d been staring at his ass for most of the day and she’d wondered what it would feel like. She was not disappointed with its firmness as she grabbed hold and pulled on him, hard, his soft groan spurring her on.

He reached down, grabbing her ankle and pulling up, wrapping it around his hips, needing her heat. His hand found her breast, cupping it, feeling its weight before he squeezed and kneaded it, wanting to feel just how soft and pliable she was.

Initially she was quiet as he rocked into her. But as her body responded to him, his firm touch, and as she felt him get harder and harder, she couldn’t help the whine that began. He couldn’t have her making noise, though, and give away their position. He quickly tossed aside the first thought that came to mind: stop, because that was just not an option.

His hand came up off her breast and he found her throat. He didn’t squeeze as much as apply pressure.

Becca couldn’t help the sounds. His gloved hand gave her chills.

“Shhhhh. No noise, Becca. Can you do this with no noise?”

Becca nodded, not wanting to make noise and have him stop.

“You want to do this?”

She reached up, getting close to his ear as her hands moved down between them. She worked her hand into his fatigues and wrapped her hand around his hardening length, stroking him, encouraging him.

“I want you to fuck me.”

He shuddered at her whispered proclamation, turning his head and teasing her earlobe. He tasted the grime of the day and knew he couldn’t get exactly what he wanted, but he’d come close.

He removed one of his gloves, using his teeth before sliding his fingers into her waistband, edging south. He kept his touch gentle as his fingers found her mound and then her labia. He tilted his head to watch her, study her reactions, determine if he was going to need to stop if she couldn’t keep quiet. Her eyes were screwed shut, tight, as if in pain. The thrust of her hips was what told him she was not in pain; she was concentrating on staying silent.

“If it’s this hard for you to stay silent now, how do I know you’ll be able to stop yourself from making noise when I’m inside you? Here, let me show you.”

He slipped a finger into her, putting his mouth right over her ear so he could whisper and she wouldn’t miss a thing as he stroked her.

“You are a tight little thing, aren’t you?” He added a finger and he watched her clench her jaw. “You are so wet, Becca. It’s gonna feel so good when I slip my cock into your hot, tight, wet cunt.” He added a third and watched as her mouth opened. He was ready to move if she started to make noise, but he didn’t have to; she remained silent. “I’ll bet you’re sweet, too. I’ll bet you taste delicious.” He withdrew his fingers and brought them to his mouth. Sucking on them, he almost groaned.

“Baby, when we are back home, safe and sound, I promise you: my tongue will get to know every dip, every curve, every crevice. I will be licking your pussy and sucking on your clit until you beg me to stop. But for right now? I’m gonna give you exactly what you need.”

He reached down and unfastened her pants and when she knew what he was doing, she pulled her hand out of and unfastened his fatigues and shoved them down his hips before removing her pants. She knew he was right: she needed him.

“You ready for me?”

As she nodded, the head of his cock slipped in-

And her eyes opened as she was jolted awake by her plane landing. Momentarily frustrated and confused, Becca realized just how crazy her dream had been. Getting ready to have sex with a random guy and then being some key figure in the middle of, seriously, armed conflict before almost having sex with some random really fucking hot guy? She looked around, wondering if she’d made any noise while asleep and it appeared that no one was the wiser. She silently breathed a sigh of relief.

After getting off the plane, she collected her luggage and got in one of the lines for customs when she heard behind her, “Becca, I cannot wait to get you home,” right before an arm encircled her waist and the familiar voice from her dream continued. “You won't have to stay quiet once I get you home. I meant what I said. I’m gonna make you beg.”


	2. Chapter 2

“I don’t understand. How is this possible?” Becca knew she was going to start panicking any moment. It had been just a dream, right?

“What don’t you understand, Becca?” The way he said her name, spoke into her ear, held her: there was a familiarity to it, but how on earth could that be? _It was just a dream_.

“How do you know my name?” She knew she had to keep her voice down while in line. She shouldn’t draw attention to herself. It was supremely difficult, though.

“I was really hoping we wouldn’t have to go through this.” he wasn’t upset. No, that’s not what she heard. Frustration? Resignation? What was it?

She began to panic. “People can’t just- You don’t share- I mean, seriously! How is this possible?”

“Bec, why shouldn’t this be possible?” That made her stand up and take notice. There were only a few who called her Bec, but who were they? She couldn’t remember.

“Who the fuck are you?” She’d raised her hand in front of her mouth, ready to stifle the scream that was welling up inside.

He hesitated. Was he going to answer?

“Liberty.”

“That’s not real. That doesn’t mean anything!”

“Why are you so sure? Ah, we’re up. Come on.”

“What do you mean ‘we’?”

He took her passport out of her hand and paired it with his, presenting both, along with some other papers, to the customs official in the booth. She didn’t understand what was going on. Why was he taking charge? Was this another dream?

That’s when she finally saw his face. He didn’t just _sound_ like the man from her dream. He _was_ the man from her dream. She could feel her panic escalate and took several deep breaths. She knew she couldn’t panic. She was trying to get through customs and, where? Where the hell was she going? She glanced around and realized she was coming home. Okay, she could deal with home. She just wanted to get out, into a cab, get home, and take a bath. She wanted a long soak at home. But wait, where was home? She was so scrambled she couldn’t remember her address, or what town she lived in.

They were through customs quickly. That wasn’t normal, was it? Becca couldn’t remember.

She saw she had an escape from ‘Liberty’, but he still had her passport. She could always leave it behind, say it got lost and replace it, right? She started to walk off and felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Bec? Where are you going? Our car’s this way.”

“ _Our_ car?”

“Yeah. I always hire a car when we come home from a trip.”

She realized she had no choice but to follow him. He had everything of hers. He spoke of all of this as if it was a foregone conclusion. Who the hell was this man to her?

Before she knew what was happening, they were in the car and being whisked away. Where was he taking her? What the hell was going on?

“Becca, talk to me, please?”

“Why are you acting like we know each other?” She couldn’t look at him. None of this made sense.

“Baby, I’m so sorry that this isn’t making sense. I promise it will once we get home and get you settled. I bet you want a bath, don’t you? When we get home, why don’t you just head inside and up to our bathroom? I’ll take care of the bags and pour you a glass of wine. Would that work?”

“Who _are_ you?”

His sigh spoke volumes and she saw him get ready for, for what she didn’t know. “Becca, I’m your husband.”

She couldn’t back away from him fast enough, farther into the corner than she already was. She looked down and saw a ring on his hand, but none on hers.

“I have your rings, baby. They’re in my suitcase. You’ll see, when we get home. Maybe something there will jog your memory.”

_Panic, panic, just don’t panic._ “Why don’t I remember you?”

“Can we wait until we get home to have this conversation?”

“No. I don’t know if it’s safe for me to go anywhere with you.” She could see that she’d hurt him and her first instinct was to reach out to him, comfort him, to tell him that she didn’t mean to hurt him. She knew, though, that she had to take care of herself first.

He did what he could to get his emotions under control. She could see there was a war raging inside him. He took her hand in his and she almost yanked it back, but thought better of it. Was she going to need reassurance, or was he? Liberty turned her hand over and massaged her pulse point with his thumb. It was familiar and calming. She looked down and noticed he had the same bracelet she did: an infinity symbol attached to a leather band. Becca could tell they were handmade and that one shared item was far more reassuring than anything else that had been said or done up to that point.

“You were in an accident. We were on vacation in Italy and we got hit by a truck on your side of the car. When you woke you didn’t remember me and you freaked out. You kept talking about explosions and guns and you had to get to the extraction point. They sedated you and wouldn’t let me back in to see you. Your Dad pulled some strings and got you out of the country as quickly as he could, but you and I still hadn’t talked.”

“That doesn’t make any sense? I just got stuck on a plane? Who would do that?”

“I take it you don’t remember your father.”

That stopped her in her tracks.

“I, oh God, no, I don’t.”

“Do you know your name?”

“Rebecca,” she was obviously searching for her name and she was spiraling out of control. “ _Rebecca..._ ”

He grabbed her hand and laced their fingers. He scooched closer and held the back of her head, forcing her to look at him. He did what he could to stifle his own escalating panic and come across as calm and assured.

“Baby, it’s okay, we’ll get through this. Your name’s Rebecca Liberty. I’m Steve Liberty, your husband. You were born Rebecca Northbrook, Rebecca Anne Northbrook. We live in Walnut Creek.” He stopped, checking her face, wanting to hear any acknowledgement, he’d even take a snide comment, that she knew these things.

What he saw was pain, and he couldn’t even begin to understand what she was going through. He silently cursed the Admiral for getting her out of that hospital as early as he did.

On the bright side, though, Becca didn’t let go. In fact, she held his hand even tighter.

“Why don’t I remember any of this?” As she squeezed her eyes shut, tears escaped

“Baby, oh god I wish I could fix this for you! I am so sorry.” All Steve wanted to do was put his arms around her and protect her, take care of her until her memories returned.

“Steve, please...” she didn’t finish her thought.

“What do you need, Becca? I’ll do anything, just tell me.”

“This sounds completely crazy, because I don’t know you, but could you hold me? Please?”

Steve held Becca the rest of the way home. They didn’t talk as she sat on his lap and in his arms, tucked into him and holding on as if he were her lifeline.

She stayed close to him as they walked into their house, hoping, praying that she’d see something that would jog her memory or something that was familiar.

That didn’t happen. Not quite, anyway.

He dropped their bags as soon as they walked in and reached for her hand. She saw his movement and reached for him, her eyes surveying her surroundings.

She looked to the left and saw the cozy living room with a sofa and a couple of chairs and cabinets with knickknacks. There was an abstract painting on one wall and on another-

She dropped his hand; she had to go investigate.

Photos. Black and white photos covered the wall. Landscapes and people and patterns. She lingered on one, a staircase down the core of a building shot as if from the middle of the ceiling. The patterns of the spindles and the steps and the tiled floor and the light streaming in on most of the floors all worked well against each other. She reached out and touched the glass before she moved on.

She saw one of a pretty woman hugging a man. She looked, almost, familiar.

And then she saw the photo, or really, the series that changed everything.

Her, in a wedding dress with a bouquet held down, at her side. She was standing several steps up a staircase so the train of her dress could easily be seen. It was obviously posed but there was something otherworldly about the expression on her face.

The next, walking down the makeshift aisle somewhere, outdoors, in the grass. She was radiant, and the pictures of Steve. The photographer had to have caught his initial reaction at seeing her, and the several seconds after. Becca was bowled over at the emotion she saw: his surprise, his grin, how his eyes shone.

She turned, looking for Steve and saw him in the doorway, doing his best not to watch her. She saw his shoulders slump before he stood up and squared them.

“Why don’t you head upstairs, take a bath. I’ll take care of our bags and then bring you some wine. Do you want red or white?”

“I’d love the Pinot Grigio. Thank you.”

She heard him pick up the bags and head off, probably to the laundry room. She exited the living room but didn’t know which way to go.

“Sorry, just hit me. Down this hall, end of the hall, that’s our bedroom. Bathroom’s in there.” Becca heard how hard this was on him. He was putting on such a brave front.

She was soaking in the scorching hot tub, an array of candles behind her and on the windowsills, lit. The room was heavy with the humidity of the bath.

“What, no coconut and hibiscus soak tonight?” His soft words interrupted her thoughts.

“No, I wanted the ginger. Why, do you prefer the coconut?” She accepted the glass of wine he held out to her. She took a sip and things felt, oddly, normal.

“No, it’s not that. I was just, never mind.” He turned to exit.

“Steve?”

“Yes?”

“You’re not going to stay? Talk?”

Pain, so much pain, too much pain. “You don’t remember you, and you don’t remember me, and I don’t think it would be fair of me to trap you, naked, in that tub. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable around me; that’s the last thing I want. I’ve got the first load in the washer. Once you’re done in here, why don’t you get some sleep. It’s been a trying day for you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She couldn’t let him leave.

“Steve, wait.” She reached out to him and he moved to take her hand before his dropped back to his side. “Please? I have a couple of questions, if you don’t mind.”

He could never deny her what she needed.

“Of course. Just a sec.” He headed out and came back in with a chair. He sat a respectable distance from the tub. He did what he could to look at her as he answered her questions. He owed her that.

“How long have we been married?”

Steve sat a little straighter. She wasn’t sure if he didn’t want to answer her or if it was something else. “Two years and almost three weeks.”

“So, the trip?”

“Anniversary.”

“Where’d we go?”

“Florence.”

“Ooo, I’ve always wanted to go to Florence.”

“I know.”

“Oh.” Of course he knew. How could he not know. “Oh, you planned it, for me, didn’t you?”

She could see he was barely holding it together and when he didn’t say anything, instead only nodding she felt guilty.

“I only saw the two of us in the pictures downstairs. We don’t have kids?”

“No.”

“What, did we decide not to have them?” Becca couldn’t imagine deciding against having kids.

“No, that wasn’t it.” She gave him time enough to answer, and he finally did. “We’d both seen so many of our friends, couples, have kids too early in their relationship, before they really connected as a couple, as a married couple, and end up divorcing. We didn’t want that so we agreed that we’d wait at least two years before we started trying.”

_Two years._

“It’s been two years, what did we decide?”

“Three months ago we had a conversation and decided that, if everything went our way, this was to be our last vacation before we started trying for kids.”

“So, we decided to start trying to get pregnant?”

“Yeah. You went off the pill before our vacation. You told me there, on our first night there.” He couldn’t look at her. “I was hoping you’d get pregnant on our trip.”

“Oh.” Becca couldn’t help but wonder what the hell you’re supposed to say to something like that.

“Becca, baby, it’s much more important that you get better, that you get your memory back. We still have plenty of time to have a family.” Steve got up and picked up the chair. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.” He began to head out and stopped, but didn’t turn around. “I need for you to be patient with me. I don’t want to push you, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, I’m not trying to scare you. I simply love you with everything I am and this is very hard, not to touch you or kiss you. I just want you to get better and I will do everything I can to make that happen.”

Becca felt awful, knowing she was causing pain for him. She was on the verge of getting out of the tub when he continued.

“I’ll sleep in the guest bedroom tonight. In fact, I’ll be in there until you get better.”

“Steve, you shouldn’t be kicked out of your bed.”

“As hard as this is for me, it’s several orders of magnitude harder for you. The last thing I’m going to do is make you sleep in an unfamiliar bed. You may not have memories, but your body does, your muscles do. You’ll sleep better in our bed.”

The door snicked shut and he was gone, too quickly. She thought about yelling after him, but decided against it.

* * *

 

It was several hours later when Becca woke, startled. It was the same dream she’d had on the plane, the only difference being she woke right after she’d shot that man. She automatically reached for Steve but only felt the comforter. She recalled his comment about the guest room. She rolled over to go back to sleep, but tossed and turned; sleep was elusive and didn’t come.

She didn’t know how long she’d been up, but it felt like hours. She knew she was stuck and wouldn’t get back to sleep without her furnace next to her; it was her happy place. She missed her happy place.

Becca realized that she felt at home with Steve, remembered some things, disconnected things: she still didn’t remember him. Maybe what he’d said, that her muscles had memory, was what was going on. Her body remembered him even if her mind didn’t. But it wasn’t like she didn’t remember him. It was like she was climbing a hill and he was just over the crest, calling to her. She could hear him but couldn’t see him. She had faith that he was the one who was just over the hill.

She got out of bed, determined to find him. She didn’t know the house, but that wasn’t going to stop her.

There was a den next to their bedroom, and across from there, a bedroom, but he wasn’t in there. Farther down the hall, past the bathroom, there was another room, this time, though, the door was closed. Becca slowly turned the handle, hoping to keep the door from signaling her entry.

She was happy to see she didn’t need to continue her search. She stepped in and silently shut the door. Becca padded up to his side of the bed, looking down at his slumbering form. Her first thought: of course the sheet isn’t covering him, it never does.

She walked around to the other side of the bed, taking off the t-shirt she was wearing and dropping it on the floor. Just before sliding in she stood tall as the grin slowly spread wide. She knew she wouldn’t be in the dark forever. She didn’t care anymore about waking him. In fact, she wanted to wake him.

She slid between the sheets and snuggled up to Steve. He rolled over, mostly still asleep, and tried to spoon, but Becca was having none of it. When she wouldn’t roll over his eyes squinted open.

“Baby, what are you-”

She was ready for him. Her fingers covered his lips, stilling him. She could see him struggling to wake up.

“Shhhhh.”

She pulled her fingers away just in time for her lips to press to his. It turns out that was all she could handle for the moment. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as every nerve came alive.

Steve pulled away from her quickly. He was fully awake now.

“Becca, I can’t-”

“Yes, you can-”

“-have you pull away from me.”

“I don’t want to pull away from you. I know I’m where I’m supposed to be: right here, with you. It’s where I belong. I don’t know you yet, but I can feel it. It’s like, well, you know how there are times you can’t remember a word, it’s on the tip of your tongue and just out of reach but if only you could mentally stretch just a little more you’d get it?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s what it feels like. I know I’m supposed to be here, with you. Not with just anyone, but with you, Steve. Right now I don’t know you, but you are _so familiar_ to me, and I felt so alone, so completely and utterly alone when I woke up, and that’s not fair, to me or to you because you’re right here, waiting so patiently for me. But I don’t want to wait.”

Becca tried to kiss him again but he stopped her, keeping her, not even figuratively, at arm’s length.

They scrutinized each other as Becca gathered all the backbone she could muster.

“I need you to remind my body of who you are to me. Please, Steve. Please make love to me.” Becca couldn’t hide the desperation in her voice, and she didn’t want to. She _was_ desperate. She needed to remember something, anything, of their lives together. It felt like it was all just out of her grasp and she was straining for it so hard. She needed him to tip the balance in their favor so she could grab hold and know.

“Baby, are you sure? Are you really sure? I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’re not capable of hurting me Steve.”

“I need your word: you’ll tell me to stop if this gets to be too much, if you can’t handle it.”

She scoffed at that idea. “Not gonna happen.”

“Your word, Becca. I need your word.”

“On one condition. I want you to make love to me like you normally do. Remind me who I am, who we are. Don’t treat me like a breakable object, unless that’s how you normally treat me.”

“You are anything but breakable.”

“Then you have my word.”

He started them off by rolling so he could be on top of Becca. She knew this was exactly where he needed to be. His hard, beautiful, well-kept body on top of her. They lay like that for some time. He wanted to see some glimmer of awareness, a hint of recognition in her eyes. He didn’t get it and it broke Becca’s heart when she saw the disappointment in his eyes. She knew she was hurting him without even trying.

“I’ve missed you.”

He swiped some hair off her face, making himself take a moment. He’d been so afraid when she was knocked out from the accident, and then, after the surgery, he sat vigil by her side until she woke screaming. It pained him that the mere sight of him caused her anguish and pain.

He hadn’t known what to expect after they had to sedate her. They kept telling him that it was for the best that he stay away. And his mind went to some very dark places.

But none of that mattered since she was here, in his arms. It was all he could do not to overwhelm her with his desire, his need for her. They’d never gone so long before.

“I love you, baby.”

Becca almost responded. Almost. She wanted to. The intensity of his gaze, directed solely at her, was too much for her to handle. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, doing what she could to relax.

His soft lips enticed her, teased her as he kissed along her jaw, up her cheek to the tip of her nose before his lips met hers.

It was a first kiss. It was a reintroduction kiss.

It was heaven.

Steve took his time, he didn’t rush them. His Becca loved kissing, loved it more than making love. As much as he wanted a more intimate physical connection, he let her drive this part. He’d have his turn.

When he felt her tug at his bottom lip, as only she’d ever done, his heart soared and he couldn’t contain himself any longer. His fingers scraped against her skin as he inched his hand behind her head, sinking into her silky hair. He heard her whimper as he grabbed a handful and he deepened the kiss. He didn’t need to ask for admittance, she parted her lips and when she felt his tongue slip between her lips, she grabbed hold and nothing on earth would make her let go.

This was familiar. The weight of him, his hand in her hair, the plushness of his lips, the rumble of his groan, deep within his chest. And when his groan changed, and changed again, she knew.

And if she had any doubts, they were wiped clean away when he kissed her neck, down her shoulder, and to that spot, the one that sent her over the moon. He sucked her flesh into his mouth and bit, gently. He felt her still as he kissed it better before doing it again, this time harder, leaving a mark. Her familiar keening cry incited him, made him continue.

As he kissed his way down to her dusky nub, he felt her body quivering, shaking and when he glanced up at her, he reached up and wiped at her tears.

“I’m okay, Steve. I’m okay. Please, don’t stop.” To emphasize her point, Becca grabbed the back of his head and struggled against him to keep him in place. She knew he could easily overpower her if he wanted, but he let her win. That put a smile on her face, even as the tears were still streaming.

“Talk to me baby, what’s going through your brilliant mind?”

“My body does know you, even if, for whatever reason, my stupid brain doesn’t. I know that I love you, I can feel it in my bones even if I can’t remember it. And this hurts, it hurts me, but it hurts more because I know this hurts you and I don’t-”

He rolled off and got up on one elbow, towering over her. “You are going to stop right now.” His tone told her she needed to listen. His tone told her he was, in no uncertain terms, in charge. “You need to get out of your head, Becca.”

“Steve, I’ve got this disconnect- oh!.” Becca’s back bowed as she threw her arms to the side, giving herself any leverage she could find to thrust herself onto Steve’s hand, the one that had stopped her from any further discussion when his fingers parted her labia and plunged into her, finding that spot that always stopped her in her tracks. 

Once he knew he had her attention, he stilled his fingers.

“You need to get out of your head. Anytime you get like this, I’m the only one who can get you to stop. Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I know you, even if I don’t remember you. I know you wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Then you’ll do as I say?”

“But Steve- FUCK!” He’d begun stroking her again, the way he knew her body would respond.

“I see I’m going to have to teach you the same lesson I taught you long ago.” He kept his fingers moving as he got to his knees.

“Open your eyes and look at me.”

She did as she was told.

“Put your hands over your head. That’s right, grab the headboard. Don’t move, and keep your eyes on me. As long as you’re a good girl and do as I say, I’ll let you come.”

Steve smiled at her whimper.

“Now, spread your legs for me, that’s right. A little wider.” He kept his fingers gently massaging her clit as he settled between her legs.

Every time Becca closed her eyes, Steve stopped. Every time she moved, Steve stopped. She finally got the hint that he was serious and relaxed. Steve caught the subtle change.

“There’s my girl.”

Those words echoed in Becca’s ears, rattling around in her brain. She’d heard that before. From him. She recognized his voice, something he’d said to her. She couldn’t stop her grin, along with a few tears.

It was starting to come back to her.

“What’s that smile for, baby?”

“I recognized your voice. Just now.”

“You’re serious.”

“Yeah, baby, I’m serious.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“NO! Don’t you dare!”

He moved and lay on the bed between her legs, his tongue taking over for his fingers. He’d missed her sweet taste and her musky scent. He lapped at her, savoring her, content right where he was.

“Steve, please, I need to feel you. Please, let me move and give me your hands.”

If she was doing what he thought- he nodded and reached up. They laced their fingers together. Steve hummed his approval as his lips took her clit back into his mouth. He massaged her, stroking the underside and she tightened her grip right before he fluttered and flicked his tongue over her. He felt her thighs start to quiver and quickly moved to her most sensitive spot, but softened his touch. He wanted to prove to her that he knew her, that he’d always know her.

Becca felt the burn get hotter, lower in her belly right before he moved and now, well, now she couldn’t quite get to where she needed to go. He kept her there, desperate for more but not giving it to her. Her thighs shook with her restraint and because he wouldn’t let her go over that precipice.

He let go of her hands and wrapped his arms around her trunk, lacing his fingers together, anchoring her to him as he flicked and fluttered and massaged harder, faster. She knew what was coming next, and her sounds and trying to get away and shaking and bucking told Steve she was coming, hard. He wouldn’t let her body recover, keeping her twitching until she was coming again. He knew the most she could handle like this was three, and _that_ was pushing it, and he wanted her at the edge, defenses down, so focused on him that she’d get out of her way and remember: remember them, their life together, and their plans for the future.

He felt her body’s release a third time and stopped, knowing she’d be oversensitive. He knew he had a small window of time he could let her come back to this world from wherever she went before he could do what he wanted. He lay on top of her, careful not to crush her, and settled in. He paid attention to her breathing and how the muscles at the corners of her mouth twitched into a smile that got bigger right before she threw her arms around his neck.

“You liked that, did you?”

“You know I did!”

“Are you ready for more?”

“Make love to me, Steve.”

She felt him slowly, painstakingly slowly stretch her, fill her. _Complete her_. She regarded him and was amazed at his beauty: eyes almost closed, brows knitted, little beads of perspiration at his hairline as he strained to stay in control. The last couple of inches saw his mouth open as he groaned his contentment.

Becca answered with her own cry.

They both stilled, feeling how complete the connection was between them.

She studied Steve and then ran her hand back and forth over his jaw, scratching at his beard. He closed his eyes and pressed his face into her hand. She adjusted her body, throwing her legs around his waist, changing the angle so she could concentrate on him.

He stirred, opening his eyes, and she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he was showing her his soul.

“Baby, I love you, so much.” He could barely get the words out, he had to clear his throat several times and even then his eyes were misty. He got onto his forearms and when he kissed her, he felt them become one. The process of finding their way back to each other brought them closer than he ever thought possible.

As they kissed, he started to move, flexing his hips, making the smallest of moves out and in and out again. He felt her adjust a bit more as he settled into a rhythm without breaking the kiss.

When his rhythm was no longer enough for him, he reluctantly broke their kiss. He needed oxygen.

“Becca, Jesus, you feel so good. I’ve missed you so much, baby.”

It still wasn’t enough for him. He got up on his hands and maneuvered her. She was happy she practiced yoga, given she was folded in half - _Wait, I practice yoga? -_ and Steve saw her body’s reaction to their favorite position – _one of two_ , he thought – and sped his hips, slamming into hers. He heard her exclamation and for a brief moment, he thought he’d hurt her, until she beamed at him, clinging, her hands, fingers, nails digging into him. It was her nails that did it, that shoved him past the point of no return. He screwed his eyes shut, knowing if he saw her beatific face he’d lose it immediately.

“Becca, baby, I need you to come for me. Baby, now!”

She heard his plea and loosed one hand, quickly finding her clit and circling it once, twice was all it took for her to scream, her back trying to arch but being denied.

Steve felt her release. She clamped down on him so hard that she almost expelled him and that drove him over and he was grunting and groaning as he emptied his seed into her, his hips stuttering and snapping to seat him completely within.

He moved, only enough to let her legs back down before he collapsed on top of her. He knew she could take his weight. She’d always been able to.

“You’ll tell me if I get too heavy, right?”

“Of course! You know it always feels good to have my own private merc on top of me.”

“Mmmhmm. Wait, what did you just say?”

“My own private m- oh wow! My memory, it must be coming back, but in little bits, in bite-sized chunks.” Becca couldn’t help the tears, and she didn’t care.

“It’s okay, baby. You’re on your way back to me. That’s all that matters.”

Their excitement didn’t wear off until after sunrise and only then did they fall asleep.

* * *

 

It had been a glorious few days. Becca  remembered only tidbits. She wasn’t remembering Steve, just things about him, funny little things, like, he liked his bacon undercooked, which just grossed her out, or his eggs well done, almost dry. And he couldn't live without coffee in the morning; he was an absolute bear without it. He also really liked Merchant-Ivory films. Go figure.

Her life had to continue and she hadn’t been cleared to go back to work yet, so she was out running errands while Steve was working on a project in the garage that he wouldn’t tell her about. Whatever.

She was in the grocery picking up a few items, and noticed a man, only a few inches taller than her and extremely good looking. Maybe he was an ex? Her memories were still coming back to her, so anything was possible. She put it out of her mind when she got to the register and he was nowhere to be found.

It wasn’t until she was at her car that he approached her.

“Oh my god, Rebecca, it is you, Rebecca, isn’t it?” he sounded hopeful.

“Who are you?”

“I thought you were dead! Where have you been?”

“I’m going to repeat myself before I scream bloody fucking murder. Who are you?”

“Becky, you don’t recognize me?”

She inwardly cringed at the nickname she’d hated since childhood. _Oh great, another memory comes to the surface, but at the most inopportune time._

“No, why should I?”

“I’m Ben. Your husband, Ben Braford?”


	3. Chapter 3

“You have got to be mistaking me for someone else.” Becca rushed to put her bags in the car. She had a sudden desire to break all traffic laws to get home to give Steve a big hug and convince him to fill her in on her life rather than letting it naturally come back to her. “I don’t know any Mr. Braford.”

“Becky, what’s wrong? Why don’t you recognize me? Have I changed that much?” He closed the gap and grabbed her arm.

It took everything in her not to scream bloody murder.

“Back your ass up right now.” Her fury was unmistakable, yet Ben was ignoring it.

“I don’t understand, Becky.”

“First of all, let go of my arm.” It was a moment before he did as she wished. She shut the car door and took several steps back.

“Second, I do _not_ know you. You do not get to call me by my given name.” She almost let on that she didn’t like that nickname, but she thought better of it. She didn’t want to give this stranger who claimed to be her husband _what the fuck?_ too much information about herself.

“What am I supposed to call you then, Mrs. Braford?” He had the nerve to huff a laugh.

“Considering that’s not my name, no.”

“Then what, Miss Northbrook?”

Becca was getting frustrated by this man’s attitude, as if he had a right to anything from her and then it hit her: he’d made another mistake. She’d never been addressed as ‘Miss’ anything, of that she was sure. But again, she didn’t want to let on. Whoever he was, whatever he was trying to do, she couldn’t clue him in on his mistakes.

“That would be acceptable.”

He took the three steps necessary to close the gap and put his hand on her arm again. She jerked it away as if his touch burned.

“You. Keep your hands to yourself and back off. Now!” He was now blocking the driver’s door and she wasn’t sure what to do. Then she had an idea and slowly one small step at a time, walk around him and back into the store.

“Why don’t you know me? Why don’t you know your own husband?” He didn’t have the emotion one would expect in his voice. He sounded flat, almost hollow.

“I happen to know my husband very well.” There was no reason for her to let on that she was having issues with her memory. “He is at home in the garage working on a project. Please leave me alone.”

“He’s an imposter. He is not your husband.”

“And you are? Why should I believe you when you are wholly unfamiliar to me?”

“Yes, I am your husband. We met, we fell in love while at university.” Ben grabbed Becca and spun her to face him. “What has that imposter done to you?”

She was done being pleasant. This man was harassing her, he was ignoring her requests. She was done being nice.

“I said get your god damned hands off of me!” She hated yelling, but maybe, just maybe if she brought attention to her situation, he’d leave her alone.

It appeared to work. He held his hands up and took a couple of steps back.

“I don’t understand why you don’t recognize me. We were together for almost 10 years.”

“And this is why I’m telling you you have the wrong person. I don’t know you. Now, step the fuck aside!”

“Becky, please!”

“Stop calling me that! Get away from me or so help me, I’m calling the cops.”

The problem with Ben was he wasn’t taking the hint, hell, it wasn’t even a hint, to leave her alone. She had to find a way to extricate herself, and fast.

Then she realized, this guy was making mistakes left and right. First was her nickname, then how to address her if she were single. He was clearly trying to get inside her head. Did she actually know him? The scant details he had given would have been public knowledge. Time to try to test some things out. Problem was, she didn’t remember much about herself. Things were still extremely hazy. So how do you test someone when you don’t have the answer key yourself? Bluff? Maybe she could try that. Becca thought the key might be in how quickly he answered her. If he hemmed and hawed or delayed in any way, well, she’d know she had him. But if he was fast on his feet, if somehow he knew she was having trouble with her memory, well, she could be in even more trouble than she realized. She had to try.

“Where did we meet?”

“I told you, when we were at university.”

“I didn’t say when, I said where.” She was just going to go with it. Rapid fire questions, if he’d let her.

“Stanford.”

Seriously, why couldn’t she remember she went to Stanford?

“I said where!”

“I just told you where.”

That was it. Her questions were rapid fire, meant to intimidate him.

“On campus or off? What day of the week? What was the building? Who else was with us? What time was it? Details, give me the fucking details NOW!”

“Jesus, Becky, stop it!”

“I DON’T KNOW YOU! Stop assuming I’m faking this. Stop being familiar with me. Tell me what I want to know.” She waited a few seconds and when he didn’t speak she continued. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She took out her phone and quickly snapped a photo. “I’m going to the police. Stay the fuck away from me.”

She tried to get in the car but he blocked her way.

“I’ll bet he’s told you that you are his life. Or maybe he said something about loving you completely, or with everything he has, something along those lines. Am I right?”

A chill started creeping up her spine. “What the hell did you just say?”

She could tell he knew he had her, that smug bastard. “Where did they tell you that you just got back from? Was it Italy? Did he use your desire to see Florence to convince you that you were married?”

That stopped her in her tracks.

“Yeah, I thought that’d get your attention. Check your passport. See where you really were. When you want some answers, call me. I’m at the Hyatt House. My name is Ben Braford. I’m your husband, Becky.”

* * *

Becca felt like she was losing her mind.

After having clearly used an opening to startle her, _I thought you were dead_ _,_ Ben purposefully tried to rattle her, get her to think Steve wasn’t her husband and therefore couldn’t be trusted. She didn’t remember where she worked, how she and Steve had met or their whole life together, but she did remember his voice and how safe she’d always felt around him, that she could trust him. She clung to that as she drove home.

She pulled into the driveway, turned off the engine, and rested her head on the steering wheel. Becca needed to get her racing brain under control if she was going to survive this.

She couldn’t remember her life. She was having a crazy recurring dream, complete with bombs dropping and killing someone starring none other than the man who was her husband.

Or was he?

She knew him, she was _sure_ she knew him. His scent, his laugh, his voice, his taste: all were intimately familiar. How he made her feel. She felt protected within his arms, and safe.

Loved.

The way he looked at her, was patient with her, was gentle and encouraging and knew just what she needed. He said just the right things at just the right moment.

The way he kissed her. The way he made love to her.

He was perfect.

She knew him. He was hers. She was his. They were going to start a family soon, for crying out loud. Yes, she couldn’t remember him, but it was still her future. Nothing else felt as right as that.

The only thing she couldn’t remember about him was his face. Or meeting him. Or their life together. That was all.

Becca thought about the previous night and how they’d cooked dinner together, sat in each other’s embrace after and talked about what she’d remembered during the day. The morning after she’d started to remember she developed the habit of talking about what came back to her in the greatest detail she could, hoping that it would further provoke her memories. A couple of times it had worked so they continued.

And last night, after that conversation she’d broached the subject of kids. They got into an animated conversation about what they wanted for their life and their family: the experiences, their hopes and dreams. And they kissed and made love into the wee hours of the morning. She couldn’t imagine being happier or more in love than she was at that moment.

So why on earth would her brain latch onto what this man, this interloper, this complete and utter stranger was saying as if it were truth. Why? Was there any truth to what Ben had said? She knew he wasn’t her husband. Steve was.

Right?

She hated herself for doubting what she knew in her gut, in her heart, hell, in her soul to be true.

Becca screamed when there was a knock on the glass, accidentally hitting the horn as she flailed and surprising Steve in the process. Seeing that it was Steve, she immediately started to calm down. That didn’t mean her body wasn’t still reacting to that unexpected stimuli. She knew it would be a few minutes before she was reasonably under control. She heard him trying to get her attention and waved him off. She missed the pained look on his face.

Groceries all carted into the kitchen, Becca was putting everything away. She had no idea how long she’d been sitting in her car, but it had to be a while given how soft the chocolate truffle and cinnamon churro ice creams were. She heard Steve come in as she was putting the last of the items in the refrigerator.

“Where’s my passport?”

When he didn’t answer right away she glanced in his direction.

“Why do you need your passport?”

“I just, I want to see it.” Becca hadn’t expected that response. She was still rattled from her run-in with Ben and trying to come up with a plausible explanation as to why she wanted her passport.

“Are you planning a trip?”

“No. Of course not. I just thought, well, maybe if I see the other stamps in my passport, maybe it’ll spark a memory.”

“You know what the doctor said. You shouldn’t try to force this, remember?”

“Of course I remember… I was there when he told that to me after all.” She couldn’t help her attitude. What’s more, she didn’t want to.

“What’s wrong, Becca?”

She’d had enough. Steve didn’t know what hit him.

“You have no idea how fucking frustrating this is, I don’t remember anything and it pisses me off that I can’t remember you, I just feel like I’ve failed. And I’m starting to doubt whether or not we should even try for a family and it _hurts_ me that I can’t remember you. I can’t remember my friends or the rest of my family. I can’t remember my job. I feel like a fucking failure!”

She slammed the door to the refrigerator. Hearing the condiments on the door go crashing was the straw that broke her. She ran to her walk-in closet in their room, her place of refuge in their home, curled up in the corner, and wept.

That was how Steve found her a few minutes later. He sat next to her and coaxed her into his lap, handing her Kleenex.

“I am so sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to cause you any more pain.”

His attempt to comfort her caused even more tears. It took a while, but Becca finally got herself under control.

“I’m the one who needs to apologize. You’ve been nothing but kind and respectful and helpful and patient and loving and how do I repay you? I turn on you and take everything out on you. I am so sorry.” She clung to her safe harbor.

“Baby, I can take it. Yell, scream, rant, whatever you need, I can handle that. I’m here for you.”

“Stop being so fucking perfect. I don’t deserve you.”

When she got like this he knew he couldn’t try to correct her, that it would just set her off even more, so Steve stayed quiet while she got herself under control.

“Becca, what happened while you were out?”

“What do you mean?”

“You were fine when you left and you’ve been completely on edge since you got back. What gives?”

She had to deflect. She couldn’t tell him she was doubting him; she couldn’t hurt him like that. A thought hit her, something she’d been wanting to do.

“I want to change doctors. I don’t like Dr. Sanderson.”

“Why don’t you like Dr. Sanderson?”

“I don’t like this ‘wait and see what happens’ method of treatment. I should be prompting my brain for things!”

“Becca, look, I don’t know if you’re an expert at this kind of stuff, but we know for sure he is. We have to listen to him.”

“What?”

“Becca, I’m sorry, but you don’t really have a choice.”

“What do you mean I don’t have a choice? Of course I have a choice in who treats me.”

“He’s the only one around who has a high enough clearance to talk to you.”

“I’m sorry, clearance?”

“Security clearance. It has to do with your work. That’s all I’m allowed to say.”

“My work?” Becca straightened up and Steve knew he was in for it. “What the fuck? My work? What the hell do I do? Why is no one being honest with me?”

“Becca, your security clearance is higher than mine. Hell, it might even be higher than your father’s.”

“Wait, do I work for the government? What do I do?”

“I don’t actually know what you do.”

“What the hell, Steve?” Frustration wasn’t even close to being accurate.

“You’re a geneticist. I don’t know what you do. I know you got your doctorate at Stanford. Whatever you do goes way over whatever I remember from my high school biology class.”

“This can’t possibly be my life.”

She pushed herself up off Steve’s lap and stalked out of the closet.

“Bec! Where are you going?”

“Damn it! I’m going out!” She spun around. “I really don’t like that you held this back from me, even if that damn doctor told you to. This is _my_ memory, _my_ life! No one else gets to make decisions for me!”

Steve slumped back against the wall when he heard the door slam.

“I thought this was our life.”

* * *

Becca grabbed her purse and keys on her way out and took off. She had no idea where she was going; she simply drove. When she finally started paying attention to where she was, she saw exit signs for the reservoir. That sounded like a good place to go, get away from everyone and everything and just be. She couldn’t go somewhere to think, considering she didn’t know anything about herself. But being surrounded by nature and someplace quiet sounded like heaven.

She paid for parking, grabbed a bottle of water from the stash she always kept in her trunk (what a convenient time to remember that!), and headed off on one of the trails.

She kept walking, long after her water was gone, long after her legs were sore. She needed to get the shit storm that was in her head out. At dusk she headed back to her car and back home, dejected. The voices in her head were far from quiet. It hadn’t worked.

She found him in the kitchen, cooking dinner for them, when she got home. The sound of the onions sizzling in the pan masked her entrance.

“Steve.”

He pivoted to find her directly behind him.

“Becca. Are you alright?”

“No.” She couldn’t help the tears that started to fall.

Steve had been resolved to let her come to him with whatever was going on in her head, let her call the shots. Her tears changed everything. He reached out and wiped them off her cheeks as they fell.

“What can I do, baby? How can I fix this?”

“I need you to quiet the voices in my head.”

“What are they saying?”

“They are yelling and screaming and crying and scared. Steve, I’m scared.” Becca reached out, grabbing hold of his shirt, clenching the fabric” They are using anything and everything, absolutely anything that you say or do or don’t do or don’t say to try to make me doubt you, make me doubt who you are. I know who you are, you are my husband. I know some things about you but I don’t know you. I remember your voice, or maybe it’s a memory of a memory, or whatever, but not your face. I don’t remember us and, and they know that and they prey upon that and they are fucking with my mind! I need you to shut them up. I need you to shut them up once and for all.”

“Is that what you need from me? Is that how I can help you?”

“Yes!”

“You need me to prove to those voices that I know you? That I’m the only one who knows you? That I know just what to do to get you to stop this spiral?” He reached out and took hold of her shoulder, thumb caressing the spot that he knew so well. “That this spot on your shoulder is the first place I can get you to stop whatever you’re doing and pay attention to me, to only me? It’s not the only place and I’m the only one who knows where they are.”

He saw the lines on her face soften as she nodded.

“You want me to prove to them that I know you better than you know yourself, that I know that when your jaw trembles, the second time it trembles, and then that most gorgeous sound that you make comes out of you, that’s when I need to either slow down or hurry up whatever it is that I’m doing to you because you’re about five seconds from going past your orgasm horizon, as you like to call it?”

She smiled when she heard that forgotten yet familiar term. “Yes!”

“And that I’m the only one who knows if slower or faster is right for you? Let me take care of you.”

He led her back to their bathroom and undressed her before taking his own clothes off. Once the water was on its way to hot, he had her step into the shower. It had been so hard, that first night when they were home and she was in the bathtub, not to reach out to her. Steve took great pleasure in bathing his wife.

He started with her hair, just as he had their very first time. It had become a ritual they shared whenever they could. He had her stand with her back to the water, soaking her hair before he used her shampoo. Becca always got a blissed out look on her face when he did this, and today was no exception. He massaged her head for several minutes, releasing the tension in her scalp. She’d put her arms about his waist, needing him to anchor her. Steve worked the lather through to the ends before rinsing it out. Becca bent backwards to keep the soap from running into her eyes and he kissed her as the last of the lather rinsed out of her hair and down the drain. After he applied a generous amount of conditioner, leaving it on while they continued, he took her into his arms and soundly kissed her. Although they were getting along well, present day notwithstanding, reconnecting, he was still walking on eggshells around her and had been since they got home. This was the only time, when he was loving his wife, that he didn’t feel the need to tread lightly.

When he stood back up, Becca voiced something that had been nagging at her.

“My recurring dream isn’t a dream, is it?”

Steve gently shook his head.

“What happened?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Steve? Why not?”

“Bec, you’re very vulnerable to suggestions right now. I can’t say anything, because to do so could jeopardize your true memories. I’m not even allowed to comment when you do remember something if you don’t recognize it as a recovered memory. I didn’t know this before, but with what happened earlier, after you left, I called Dr. Sanderson and he explained. I still don’t know what you do, but I know whatever you do is so important that they have _the_ expert on recovering memories after a trauma coaching Dr. Sanderson through this. He was actually pissed at me for telling you the stuff that I did. He said it’s possible I set your recovery back. If I did, Becca, I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”

Becca looked at Steve, really studied him. She saw the creases between his eyes that were deeper than normal and the purple-blue shadows under them; he wasn’t sleeping. The skin on his lower lip had seen better days; he was worried.

But it was his eyes that told his desperate tale, the one he had of trying to get his wife back. The one of how he was struggling with everything that was going on, that told of his anguish at not being remembered. It struck Becca, how torn he was, how much he wanted to help her, to make this right for her. She fell madly in love with her husband, for the second time in her life, in that moment. Things came suddenly into focus with crystal clarity.

“Oh my god.”

“What, baby?”

“How could I have been so selfish?”

“How have you been selfish?”

“All of this has been about me: _my_ recovery, _my_ suffering, _my_ pain and anguish. What about yours?”

“Mine?”

“It’s etched on your face, baby.”

“What is?”

“Your recovery, your suffering.”

“Where?”

“Here,” she stretched her hand up and paid attention when he closed his eyes as she caressed from the center of his forehead down to the tip of his nose, and again as she stroked the soft skin under his eyes. “And here.” There was no way she could miss his clenched jaw as she scraped her fingernails along his cheek, settling her thumb on his lips. “I want to take care of you.”

“That’s my job.”

“Steve, that’s both of our jobs.” She tugged on the back of his neck, and he gave in, reluctantly, until their foreheads touched. “You have been taking care of me, please let me take care of you.”

“Becca, you are normally the one with all the answers, with the plan. You don’t have that right now and I know it’s part of what’s eating away at you, even if you don’t recognize it. There are no dragons I can slay to fix this. I am utterly useless in all this and it’s driving me crazy. I need you to let me take care of you.”

“But Steve-”

“No buts. Baby, let me take care of you.”

When she nodded, he got her puff and used her favorite body wash, scrubbing her from her neck all the way down to her toes.

She returned the favor.

Once they were both rinsed and out of the shower, Steve dried both of them off. He finished on his knees with Becca in front of him. He wrapped his arms around her waist and held her tight. They didn’t move for several minutes.

“Steve?”

“Mmm?”

“What’s wrong?” Becca scratched her fingernails over his scalp, knowing it was one of his favorite sensations.

“I got this feeling, this, I don’t know, sense? that if I let go you’ll vanish and I’ll never see you again.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Not unless it’s with you.”

“Promise?”

“Promise. Now, I need you to do something.”

“What’s that?”

“I need you to make love to your wife. You think you can handle that?”

The smile on his face answered her question, but he wanted to leave no room for doubt. “Oh, I can more than handle that.”

Steve was true to his word.

* * *

Becca had errands she took care of the following morning. She’d cut her trip short the day before when Ben had confronted her. She got everything done and had one more stop before heading home.

She walked up to the check-in desk. “Yes, could you please ring Ben Braford and let him know Rebecca L-, um Becky Northbrook is here?”

Before the manager could pick up the phone, Becca felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Hi, Becky. Took you longer than I thought it would, but I knew you’d come.”


	4. Chapter 4

It didn’t take long before Becca had finally heard Steve fall asleep in the wee hours of the morning. They’d made love several times after their shower and talked for a little while. Sleep wouldn’t come for Becca, though.

She slid out of the bed, careful not to move it and disturb him. She grabbed a blanket at the foot of their bed and padded to the living room. She chose the club chair- _Steve’s chair_ -that had her facing their photos on the wall. She could really only see their dark frames and all she could do was imagine the life that was displayed, the life that she and Steve shared. She thought maybe, just maybe, she might see something, be able to concentrate on something that would spark a memory. Any memory would do. She’d be happy to remember anything as mundane as brushing their teeth at the same time or as awful as a fight. She’d be happy to remember a fight, as long as she remembered Steve.

The pictures she had committed to memory previously, and especially the shot of Steve, resplendent in his charcoal grey suit, waiting for her at the other end of the aisle, looking at her as if she’d been put on this earth just for him, that one was the one she wanted to remember most of all. She thought that if she could concentrate and remember that instance, how her heart had to have filled to overflowing with his love and excitement and happiness clear as a cloudless sunny day on his face, that surely if she remembered that then the rest of their lives together, their total lives together, every instance they had spent together, would have to come back to her. There was no way, no possible reason she could think of that would make sense otherwise.

But they just wouldn’t come; the memories stayed hidden. She wanted to open up her skull, take her brain out and shake it. Shake it until all the memories popped to the surface. She huffed a laugh at that visual before she felt the tears of frustration.

Becca kept wiping the tears from her face, feeling completely overwhelmed and useless. She couldn’t understand why her memories were so elusive when her surroundings were so familiar, when everything about Steve was so familiar.

She completely understood why she might never remember the accident, or why she might never remember waking up in the hospital. The mind erasing traumatic pain made complete sense to her.

But why couldn’t she remember the man with whom she was so deeply in love that she was wanting to start a family and be irrevocably bonded to for the rest of her days? A job that, from the little she’d been told, had to have been an enormous passion in her life? Why else would she subject herself to the years of study required? And not remembering her own father? What the hell?

Something had been gnawing at her since Ben left that parting shot and it popped to the surface when she was at her most vulnerable: had she actually been in Italy? Though, that wasn’t the only thing she’d wondered. Who the hell was Ben? She knew there was no way they’d been involved, so why had he tried to make her think they were? Did he somehow know about her memory problem? Was he trying to capitalize on it? Why? What was in it for him? What was he trying to prove? She knew it would bother her until she understood what was going on.

She’d shaken it off, the questions and doubt, and looked back to the wall where that picture was. It was still too dark to see, but she’d spent so much time staring at the photos that it didn’t matter. They were all memorized.

She pulled her feet up onto the chair and wrapped herself up in the blanket, closing her eyes to ward off all the negativity and doubt. Becca was trying to quiet her mind, trying to get it as quiet as her house. She was doing what she could to relax and let her mind go. She didn’t miss her bedroom door opening and Steven’s bare feet on the wooden floor as he came down the hallway. She didn’t move.

She could tell by how he exhaled that he’d been concerned. That made her tears resurface. Becca was tired of crying. She didn’t like the feeling of her emotions controlling her. When she felt his hand on her head, gentle, caressing, stroking, playing with her hair, she finally looked up at him. They saw the pain on each other’s face and both their hearts broke. Steve squatted down so he could be eye to eye. It was so quiet in the house he couldn’t speak. He had to start with whispering.

“Becca, baby, won’t you come back to bed?”

“Not remembering is driving me crazy. I don’t get it. I just don’t.” She sounded like she’d run a mental marathon.

“Come on, stand up.” He held his hand out to her.

“Steve, I’m not ready to go back to bed.”

“Okay. I still want you to stand up.”

Reluctantly, she took his hand and got up, assuming he was going to try to lead her back to their bedroom. When he had them switch places and he sat in the chair and motioned her to sit on his lap, she was grateful. She cuddled into him and swaddled them with her blanket. He wrapped his arms around her and ran his broad palms over her back, simultaneously soothing her and chasing the chill away.

“You didn’t put anything on when you came out?”

Becca yawned before answering. “Neither did you.”

After a while, Steve thought maybe she’d fallen asleep, until-

“Would you tell me about my non-dream of a dream?”

“I can’t, baby. You know that. It has to do with your work.”

“So, wait, you can’t tell me things about work? What about personal stuff, can you tell me about that?”

Steve hated to dash her hopes.

“I think Dr. Sanderson was concerned about both.” He could feel her starting to get fidgety.

“Can you tell me how we met?”

“It had to do with your job, honey. I can’t.” He did what he could to hide the smile that wanted to come out because of her groan of frustration. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed that sound.

“How about we concentrate on you? Can you tell me about your job?”

“Baby, I’m sorry, but it’s linked to yours, it’s how we met. I just, I can’t. If I end up being the reason you can’t remember us, remember something? I’d never forgive myself. Becs, trust me, I want you back with all your memories intact.”

“Okay.” He knew she was going to keep trying. That was his Becca. “How about you tell me about your favorite day? You know, you’ve got to have a favorite day.”

“I have a lot of favorite days.”

“Please, tell me about one, would you?”

“I have three that immediately come to mind, and they’re all about you. The day we met, the day I asked you to marry me, and the day we got married.”

“Okay, so we know you won’t talk about the day we met. How about the day you asked me to marry you?”

“Becca-”

“Steve, please? This doesn’t have anything to do with my work, does it?”

He took extra time as he pondered her request. She knew she’d get what she wanted when she heard him exhale. “No.”

“Then, please? I need something. I’m not a passive person, am I?”

“No, you’re not. I know that’s a big part of why you’re so anxious.”

“Then please?”

He couldn’t refuse her. “We were coming back from a long weekend at my cabin in Big Sur. It was a really good weekend. We went hiking each day, it was breathtaking. We made dinner each night, we didn’t go out, and we talked. Boy did we talk.”

“What did we talk about?”

Steve repositioned Becca on his lap so they could look at each other as he talked to her. Sure, it was dark, but he could still see if she wrinkled her forehead or closed her eyes.

“A lot of different things. There was quite a bit of you gushing about something at work, and it all went right over my head, and you knew I didn’t understand but you had to tell someone.”

He paused, realizing for the first time how odd it was to be telling her, informing her about her life. He tucked some hair behind her ear before he continued.

“You were so beautiful in your passion. And we talked about books we’d been reading, and some things that were going on in the world at the time. We talked about our hopes and dreams. And we talked about us and our future. I mean, we did it in the abstract, but we both knew we were feeling each other out. We’d known each other a little over five months, but time didn’t matter. I knew the first time we kissed that you were going to be my wife. I scared myself with that thought, and I did what I could to put it out of my head, but it was always there in the back of my mind.”

He’d never told her that part before and he felt safe telling her now, because although she was his Becca, she wasn’t quite the same. Not yet, anyway. He continued.

“We stopped at one of those turnouts, you know, where people stop their cars to take a look at the ocean, and were watching the sunset from the back of my SUV, making out a little, and you commented that you wished we could be just like that-”

Becca complete his thought. “For the rest of our lives.”

Steve smiled, running his fingers from her ear to her lips. Becca knew it was his sad smile by the way his brow furrowed. “Yeah. I’d been thinking that weekend about what my life would be without you in it and I’d come to the conclusion it would be horrible and I wanted to ask you to marry me. If I’d made the decision any sooner, I would have asked you while we were in Big Sur, but I wanted to have a ring I could give you. When you said that, though, I knew. It was perfect. I said ‘let’s’, and you said ‘we can’t live in the back of an SUV’ and I said ‘what about in each other’s arms’ and you said-”

Becca quickly put her finger over his mouth and closed her eyes.

“That’d do.”

Steve nodded and smiled some more. He knew she wasn’t remembering him; he’d grown used to it. He continued. “I asked you, I said ‘marry me?’ and you smiled and said yes and we kissed, boy did we kiss. There are three kisses that stand head and shoulders above all others in my life. Our first one, the one from when we got married, and that one, the day we decided to spend the rest of our lives together. I don’t know why you chose me, Rebecca, but I will be forever grateful you did.”

They hugged for a little while before he continued. “I told you I didn’t have a ring and you said-”

“Who cares about a piece of jewelry when I have you?” As they finished, saying it in perfect unison, they looked at each other, one hopeful and one frustrated.

Becca shook her head. “I, criminy, I know the words, I can hear myself saying them.”

She curled herself into as small a ball as possible and Steve had hugged her to him for a few minutes as they both tried not to think too hard about what she was going through. He finally stood up and carried his wife back to their bedroom and their bed. They crawled in and snuggled up against each other.

“That sounds like the most beautiful proposal ever. I’d give anything to-”

“No, Becca, stop. You’ll get your memory back. I know you will, and when you do we’ll celebrate.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. I’ll take you back to Italy and we’ll take that vacation you wanted that we weren’t able to. Now, get some sleep.”

When Becca woke in the morning, she knew what she had to do. She needed to get answers; she needed her memory. Steve was going to continue to follow the orders he was being given, by her doctors and whoever else was involved. It wasn’t that he couldn’t be trusted, she simply knew he wouldn’t help her, not in the way she needed. Moreover, he’d discourage her. Her first stop on her road to recovering her memories was Ben. He knew something, he had to. She didn’t know why or what or how, but she was determined to find out. That was why she’d gone to his hotel.

* * *

Becca let Ben’s comment slide, the one about him knowing she’d show up, for the moment. She removed his hand from her shoulder.

“Let me get something perfectly clear. There are only two reasons why I am here. First it is to find out what the hell your game is. I know there is no way I was ever involved with you so you can just drop the pretense.”

When she told him to drop the pretense, he tried to act shocked and dismayed that she didn’t believe him. When he saw that wasn’t going to work on her, his demeanor changed.

The tsking sound coming from Ben almost, almost had her turn on her heel and leave. Her desire to find out what the hell was going on, though, won over her desire to leave and never see him again.

“Becky, you are simply too clever for your own good.”

“Would you just cut the shit. Who are you?”

“My name is Ben Braford.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Did you check your passport like I suggested?”

“What was I supposed to find? It only had stamps from places I’ve been, including Italy.” She hadn’t seen her passport, but she wasn’t about to let him know that.

“But you did check it. Don’t you trust your husband?”

“Of course I trust my husband.”

“Then why did you check it?”

“To prove you wrong.”

“But you didn’t prove me wrong, because you didn’t look at it. Did you notice the stamp for Ugiristan?”

“I’ve never been to Ugiristan.” Becca was pretty sure she’d never been there, considering she’d never heard of it.

“You just proved my point. You haven’t seen your passport. I bet Dr. Sanderson told you to just let your memories return, didn’t he?”

“How did-” Becca quickly clamped her mouth shut. _What the ever-loving fuck?_

“Yeah, I thought so. You know that’s the wrong thing to do, don’t you? Maybe you should consider seeing someone else. I can certainly recommend someone, if you like.”

“Who are you to me?”

“I am your husband.”

“Would you cut that out? Who are you?”

“I am telling you, I am your husband. We met while you were at Stanford.”

“I was never married to you. You know what? That’s it. I’m out of here.”

She got up to leave and Ben grabbed her wrist.

“You said two reasons, what’s the second?”

“To tell you to back off. Leave me alone.”

“You know that’s not gonna happen, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me sweetheart.” Ben wasn’t unhanding her. As she struggled, his grip tightened. “Let go of me.” She pulled and pulled, but his grip didn’t lessen. “Do you want me to start yelling?”

“You won’t. Instead, you’ll go home and take a look at your passport and realize I’m telling the truth when you see a stamp for Ugiristan. That will be when you come back to see me.”

“I am never coming back here.”

“Whatever you say, Becky. I know differently. You’re not a passive person. You’re going to start taking a very active approach to your recovery.” He let go of her arm and she backed away, quickly. Something he said sparked a memory, but she wasn’t sure what it was.

She got to her car, hands shaking, and was glad for the invention of keyless everything. There was no way she could have put a key in a lock or the ignition. She stepped on the brake and hit the start button. She drove away quickly, wanting to get home.

Problem was, she wasn’t ready to go home. Instead, she headed down to the Plaza, hoping to find parking so she could just be alone and think. Once she had her car turned off, she started to go through the things that were rattling around in her brain.

The first thing she remembered was opening her eyes from her nap aboard the plane. Then, Steve had been in line behind her and had said things that tied into the events of the dream she’d just had. Turns out, not really a dream, but what was fact and what was fiction? It had felt so real! Had she killed a man? That she didn’t know. He took her passport from her when going through customs and she never got it back. It had made sense at the time when she realized he was her husband- _but was he_ -and it also made sense that he’d been the one to approach the customs official. If that official had asked her any questions who knows what she would have said. Steve knew her and he knew what was going on.

For crying out loud, her _driver’s license_ was under the name Rebecca Northbrook Liberty, of course he was her husband.

But damn it if Ben didn’t put an irritant inside her brain. Just like a pearl being grown, the more she tried to cover it over, the bigger it got. She couldn’t live her life not knowing the people who were closest to her. She couldn’t continue to hurt Steve that way.

She pulled her phone out of her purse and pulled up Wikipedia. She knew it wasn’t all that reliable and she’d never quote it as a source to anything, but it did typically have decent general knowledge.

She wasn’t pleased with what she found. She knew she shouldn’t have been listening to Dr. Sanderson. She pulled up a list of psychiatrists in the area and started calling. It was the 13th on the list (odd, her lucky number) who had experience with dealing with memory and, as luck would have it, had an opening in her schedule. Dr. Harper would see her as soon as she could get there.

When Becca pulled up in front of the building she sat there for a few moments, shutting off her phone and gathering herself. Was she really going to do this, go behind her doctor’s back? She felt like she had no choice.

The building had seen better days, but the inside was neat and clean, if a little worn. It had that industrial brown carpeting that would only show spills if it were something like coffee, or years, possibly decades, of foot traffic. Dr. Harper was on the second floor and when Becca finally found office 217, she hesitated before trying the door. She knew she could back out at any moment, but just walking in felt like a betrayal to her marriage _that she couldn’t remember_. She got over that in a hurry and tried the door.

It was locked. Dr. Harper was expecting her, why was it locked? She looked around for some sort of notification buzzer or system that might be used by psychiatrists to let them know a patient was waiting. There wasn’t anything, so she knocked. She thought she heard movement, so she waited. After what felt like several minutes but was probably less than one, she knocked again. This time, the door was answered quickly.

“Mrs. Liberty?”

“It’s Dr. Liberty.”

“Apologies, I’m Dr. Harper. Please come in.”

Becca walked through the waiting area which was a pleasant enough space: white wicker furniture with a yellow and green floral pattern on the cushions that seemed like a desperate attempt at making the space friendly and inviting, especially when she spied more of the same industrial brown carpeting. There was a plant in the corner but she couldn’t tell if it was a live fichus or a plastic one. When she glanced at the wall next to the door to her office, Becca noticed the notification buzzer.

Once inside, she quickly settled in the chair to which Dr. Harper pointed. As Dr. Harper was gathering her things together for their first conversation, Becca studied her, taking note of several things. Her shoes needed to be replaced, the toes showing the most wear. Her attempt to hide it with what, black marker maybe, hadn’t worked. She wore a classic cut suit so trying to put an age on her clothing was difficult until she noticed the frayed edge along the cuff. These things didn’t bother Becca, per se, but she would remain on alert. Was she having difficulty, was her practice dwindling, had she lost her touch and she was losing patients? She was an older woman, although exactly how old she couldn’t tell. While her hair was mostly silver, she didn’t have as many lines and wrinkles one would expect with hair that color, but there were lines and wrinkles.

When Dr. Harper settled into her chair, they began their conversation.

It took a couple of hours, but Becca started with how she woke on the plane and talked about everything up to the point she went to sleep the previous night. She left everything pertaining to Ben mainly because she didn’t know what to make of him or how he fit into her story, not to mention the fact that she was still trying to figure out if she was going to continue seeing her.

Dr. Harper asked for the details of her dream that kept playing, night after night, and she recounted them in great detail, making note of the occurrences that were the same, regardless, and the pieces that were different from one time to the next.

It was when the doctor started to focus on her relationship with Steve that Becca lost her calm, cool demeanor. The tears came and she ended up crying, sobbing, really, for several minutes. It felt like forever to her before she got her emotions under control, finally able to blow her nose and wipe the tears from her face.

“Do you know the reason for your outburst? I don’t know you well enough yet so I can’t really drive the conversation right now.” Dr. Harper knew Becca was intelligent and could tell she was used to being in charge. It was also a way for her to assess how well she knew herself, probably not even realizing it.

“I do. Steve is, oh goodness, he is incredibly patient and kind and supportive. He is putting no pressure on me, but I know this is tearing him up, me not knowing him. I see it on his face every time he looks at me.”

“So what are you doing to try to remember him?”

“Staring at the pictures on the wall, going over the things that are familiar, anything I do remember.”

“Wait, am I understanding right, he’s not telling you about your life together, going over things with you? Trying to get you to remember?”

“He did last night, only because I begged and pleaded, but generally no. This other doctor, Dr. Sanderson told him not to.”

“That makes no sense.” She started scribbling some notes

“And that’s why I’m here.

“Do you remember anything at all about him?”

“Phrases, snippets of conversations we’ve had, his smell, um…” she realized the direction she’d taken and quickly stopped, quickly discovering some previously unseen invisible lint on her jeans.

“How he touches you?”

All she could do was nod.

“Have you two had sex since you’ve been back?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

She finally looked up. “I remember how he feels, how he makes me feel. I remember a lot of things but I don’t remember him. I don’t remember meeting him, I don’t remember dating or our first kiss. I don’t remember him asking me to marry him, but I remember my part of that conversation. I don’t remember getting married, but I have the pictures that prove it. It’s like he’s somehow been wiped from my memory and I don’t understand how that’s possible.”

“What is the very first thing you remember?”

“Waking up on the plane.”

“No, I mean before that.”

“That _is_ my first memory. I don’t remember my childhood, my parents, going to school, my work, my life. I know my name is Rebecca, but I had to be told my last name. I don’t understand this. It feels like someone has blindfolded me and is standing just outside of my reach with the key to my memories and is laughing at me.”

“Okay, well, that’s got to be frustrating.” Her scribbling continued. “Let’s try something else. We haven’t touched on it at all, so we’re going to now. What do you do for work?”

Becca didn’t say anything at first. She had no idea if anyone outside of work, besides Steve, of course, knew she was in genetics. Could she trust her with this information?

“Doctor patient confidentiality, it covers what we say in here, right?”

“Unless you’re going to harm yourself or others, yes.”

“Well, as far as I know that’s not going to happen.” Becca screwed her mouth to the side, biting the inside of her cheek and made a decision. “I don’t know, specifically, what I do. I have some sort of security clearance for my job and I’m in the field of genetics, and I only know that because I was told.”

“Okay.” Dr. Harper glanced at the clock and realized she was running precariously close to her next patient’s time. “I really hate to do this, but the time got away from me and I apologize, but I need to cut our time here. I have another patient.”

“I am so sorry.”

“No, Dr. Liberty, please don’t apologize. The clock is not your responsibility. It’s mine.”

Becca felt a small amount of the weight she’d been carrying around lift.

“Please, call me Rebecca.”

“Rebecca, what happens in this room is our responsibility. Yours is to do the work and show up and be honest. Mine is to guide you and provide any insight I can, and to watch the clock. What I want you to do is get your memory back, and I think you’re on your way already. It might happen gradually or all at once, but I have a feeling you will remember, well, hopefully everything. For now, I want you to journal. Write everything down. Pay close attention to what happens throughout the day. You seem to have pretty decent memory recall so go back to when you first woke up on the plane and simply write down everything.”

“What if I dictated it? There’s going to be so much-”

“No, I want you to write it down. You can type it out if you want, but I want you to pay attention to what you are transcribing. Don’t stop talking to Steve about what you remember, and going over things in detail. But I want you to also write it down. I want you to bring it with you the next time, bring a copy you can leave with me. This time isn’t normally one that’s available, I had a cancellation today, so how about I call you with times that might work? I need to check my calendar. I’d like to see you three times a week.”

“I’ll wait for your call then. Thank you, Dr. Harper.”

“Rebecca, do me a favor?”

She turned in the doorway and looked back at the doctor.

“Yes?”

“First, remember to breathe. Unless your memory pops back in all nice and wrapped up with a neat little bow, this will take some time. You need to learn patience with yourself.”

“Well, that’s a tall order.”

“I know it is. And this next one is going to be even harder. For the rest of the day today, stop trying to remember. You’ve been very hard on yourself, unforgiving. You need to give yourself a break. From what you’ve said, you have a very considerate husband. Spend time with him, pay attention to him. Go for a drive, or a picnic, or cook dinner together, or go see a movie or shopping or whatever. Just spend time with him. Don’t try to remember him, just be with him. You are putting so much pressure on yourself that it’s no wonder you’re having crazy dreams. Can you do that?”

“I can try. It’ll be hard but I can try.”

“That’s okay, the good things often are hard. I expect to be calling tomorrow. Good bye.”

Back in her car, Becca took the briefest of moments to be happy that she’d gone with her instinct to start seeing another doctor. On her drive home she reflected on their conversation, justifying it to herself that she wasn’t trying to remember anything, just reflecting. When she got home she retrieved all her packages from the trunk and headed inside.

She was transferring their clothes from the dry cleaners hangers when Steve came rushing in and almost bowled her over with his hug.

“I can’t believe you’re okay. Oh my god. I had every awful scenario running through my head when you didn’t answer your phone. Where have you been?”

“I’ve been out running errands.”

“You’ve been gone for six hours. What did you do, clean the clothes yourself?”

He released her and took a couple steps back his hands on his hips and his jaw set, hard. Becca couldn’t remember ever seeing Steve this upset-but wait, was that _ever_ ever or the past five days ever.

“Where the hell have you been?”


	5. Chapter 5

Becca went back to hanging up the dry cleaning. She wasn’t ignoring Steve, she was just delaying for a few seconds. She hadn’t thought that he’d be upset. Then again, she hadn’t realized she’d been gone that long. She knew she needed to start thinking about him more. She hated that she was hurting him.

That didn’t mean, though, that she wasn’t going to try to deflect.

“I told you, I was out running errands.”

“So you plan on sticking with that story?” It was clear he was pissed.

“Do you want a minute by minute account, or will a general idea do?” She let her emotions flow and she turned on him. She couldn’t help herself. “Have you always been like this? So fucking controlling?”

“God damn it, Becca, you scared the shit out of me! I didn’t know where you were, if something had happened to you or if, God forbid… no, I can’t, I can’t even go there. Baby, why did you turn your phone off?”

She’d turned the ringer off when she went to see Ben. She knew she’d turned her phone off for her session, but she thought she’d turned it back on. She crossed to her purse and took it out and yes, indeed, it was still off. She turned it on and felt her anger morph into tears when she saw six messages _did I check for messages before my session?_ and wondered _when will I be done with crying?_

“I must have been fiddling with the buttons on my phone. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I turned it off.” She headed back to the closet, the palm of her hand wiping at her eyes along the way, intent on getting everything hung up. Steve had other plans. He intercepted her before she could duck in there.

“Bec, right now, with you not remembering me, I don’t even want to let you out of my sight. I am terrified every time I turn around and you are not there. My worst fear is something else happens and you’re gone for good.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t-" Her entire being deflated with her exhale. She hated keeping things from him. "Fuck, I didn’t think.”

“Becca, you were not gone six hours to the pharmacy and dry cleaners. Where were you?”

“I just,” She couldn’t look Steve in the eye, knowing that she was going to be lying to him, not a complete lie, but a lie nonetheless. “I wanted to do things that normal people do. I saw I was low on gas so I filled up my tank. When I was at the gas station I saw the sticker on my window and realized I was due for an oil change, so I did that. I went down to the Plaza. I didn’t spend any money, I just window-shopped. I wandered around, hoping something would make me remember anything at all and when it didn’t, I felt like a complete failure. I didn’t know I’d turned off my phone. I didn’t mean to make you worry. I’m sorry. I am so tired of crying and of tears and of not knowing who I am, who you are. I just want to know.”

“Come here.”

“I need to finish this.”

“Nope. What you need is, Jesus this is gonna sound nuts, but you need to forget. You need to forget about forgetting. You are putting so much pressure on yourself and I’m afraid my Wonder Woman is going to crack under this self-imposed pressure.”

Their embrace lasted several minutes. Becca hated lying to Steve. Steve hated knowing she was lying to him.

“So, I’m defrosting steaks, I thought I’d cook them on the grill. What do you want to go with it?”

It only took a moment of thought. “Mmm, twice baked potatoes and your Brussels sprouts.” Her eyes popped open when she realized what she’d just said. She waited for Steve to say something, to acknowledge what she’d said and when he didn’t, she got even more frustrated. She tried to let go and turn back to the closet, but Steve wasn’t letting go.

“Where’re you going?”

“I need to go finish putting the stuff away.” From this short distance, Steve heard her teeth grinding.

“Why are you so upset?”

Becca had been holding everything back for so long that she finally let it out.

“You don’t ever comment about things I remember. I know it’s not me remembering you, but eventually it will be. What would you do if I turned to you and told you how we met, and when I knew I was in love with you? Would you just say ‘meh’ turn around and walk away?”

She was able to get out of his embrace and headed back to finish hanging the clothes up.

Steve felt completely inadequate. His wife always looked to him for support and this was the one time he couldn’t give it.

“You have no idea how much I want that to happen.”

She was at her wits end. She could no longer control herself. She hated yelling _Mom and Dad always yelled_ but she was done being the good and compliant little girl. She whirled around and let loose.

“Then why don’t you say something!”

“I can’t!”

“Because some doctor tells you to?” She turned back to the closet and grabbed at the laundry on the floor. “That’s absurd! You’re letting-”

“Rebecca! I need you to hear me. They’ve told me that I could do _irreparable_ damage if I were to tell you what you want to know.” Steve collapsed to the bed, barely staying seated on the edge. He couldn’t take care of her, he couldn’t protect her. His head down, shoulders slumped, he was silently admitting defeat.

Her back still to him, Becca’s vitriolic tone cut him with every word. “Let me guess who the “they” is, and the first two don’t count. How do you know Dr. Sanderson is any good?”

“He was brought in on your case while we were still in Italy.”

“But how do you know?”

“He was vetted by your partner, and he’s consulting with a doctor who is the expert.”

“And who is that?”

She barely registered his sigh. “They won’t tell me.”

“Are you fucking kidding me!?”

“Becca, they won’t tell me because they know I’d hound him!” He knew he had to stop hiding things from her. “Dr. Sanderson stopped taking my calls.”

“Why?”

“Maybe because I call every day.”

“Calling every day doesn-”

“Maybe more than once a day?”

Becca finally heard, not his words, but his despair. When she turned, she saw a broken man.

“Steve?”

“Okay, a lot more than one time a day.”

“How many more?”

“Probably closer to every hour?”

Becca dropped what was in her hands and was holding Steve in her arms, cradling him against her stomach, within seconds. She ran her hands over his shoulders and arms and felt his muscles bunched so hard she knew he had to have pain somewhere.

“Oh, baby, why didn’t you tell me?”

She felt him trembling as he clutched at her even harder. He enveloped the lower half of her body with his.

“I, oh Becca, I didn’t want to scare you. You’re already under so much pressure and I didn’t want to add to it.”

“My own private merc, protecting me at all costs, even to the detriment of himself. This has been killing you, hasn’t it? Steve, I’m so sorry. I’ve been so damn selfish.”

He couldn’t bring himself to tell her the worst part. He couldn’t do that to her.

Becca ran her hands through his hair, her nails scratching his scalp and running down the back of his neck. It was all she could think of at the moment, all she could do to calm him. She wanted him to relax.

She had no idea how long they were like that. She felt his grip loosen and she tried to take a step back but he wouldn’t let her.

“I don’t want to talk about your memory tonight. I don’t want that to be the focus of our conversation. I know you don’t remember our plans for our future, but I want to talk to you about those. I need to talk to you about us, about our life moving forward. I need to feel normal tonight. I know you’ll get your memory back. I think it’s just a matter of time. Until then, Christ, baby, I just want my wife back.”

“Whatever you need. Steve, tonight is yours.” She continued to stroke and scratch his head. It seemed to help.

“I don’t care if I’m the one doing all the talking. I need to feel like it’s us again.”

“I’d like that.”

“You would?”

“Yes. And I only have two conditions. First, we need to eat at some point.”

His chuckle made her smile.

“And second, as long as we make love, then tonight is whatever you want it to be. You make the rules.”

He finally relaxed his grip so she could step back. He held her hands in his.

“That sounds perfect. How about I head out and pick up the potatoes and Brussels sprouts. Maybe you can take a little nap while I’m gone? You got so little sleep last night. Your lack of sleep is starting to concern me.”

Maybe she could just relax instead of sleep. She didn’t dare tell him about her dreams. They terrified her.

“Sounds good. Could you pick up some-”

“Ice cream? Coffee or Mint chocolate chip?”

“Either? Both?”

“Whatever you want, Becca.”

“And-”

“Do you want just sea salt or salt and pepper?”

“Sweet Maui Onion, actually. Oh, but sea salt sounds good, too.”

“Are you going to be crumbling your potato chips over your ice cream again?”

“Yeah.”

“I cannot even begin to imagine what your cravings are going to be like when you’re pregnant.”

“It’ll probably be something like cucumbers and honey.” He did not miss her grimace.

“Well, considering you don’t like either of those things, probably.” It gave Becca peace to hear a lightness to his voice she hadn’t heard for a while.

“Cucumbers are awful. They’re so bitter.”

“I keep telling you, you’ve never had a ripe one. Makes all the difference. Now, why don’t you lie down, take a nap while I’m gone. I shouldn’t be more than, say 20 minutes, half an hour max?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll come check on you when I get back. If you’re asleep I won’t wake you.”

“You know how I get when my naps are too long.”

“Okay, nothing more than an hour. Maybe we take a soak in the tub before dinner? If you’re up to it?”

“We may never eat if we do that.”

“After, then. Come on, get on the bed. That’s my girl. Come on, just a little nap. You’ll feel better after, I promise.” Steve covered her with a throw from the chair in the corner. He gave her a kiss and headed out to the store.

Becca really didn’t want to fall asleep, but she knew resting would be good. She got comfortable and thought about what Dr. Harper had told her to do. Chronicling everything she remembered would take a while, but if it helped her remember, or find patterns to help her remember, she was all for the hard work.

The light in the room dimmed as the sun began its late afternoon trek across the sky and she got nice and toasty warm. She’d tried to stay awake, but she was just too tired.

Something metallic clanging on the floor woke her. Becca opened her eyes to find herself strapped down to an operating table. She was in a state of panic. She couldn’t move. She looked around and knew she wasn’t alone in the room.

To her right, Dr. Sanderson was standing over her gloved and gowned. All she saw were his eyes behind his John Lennon-framed glasses, but she knew it was Dr. Sanderson. He had a scalpel in his hand and was poised over her abdomen.

“Dr. Liberty! Pay attention to me! Tell me about your work!” It was Dr. Harper, standing to Dr. Sanderson’s right, who was yelling at her.

“But I don’t know anything!”

“Liar!” This she heard over the intercom. She glanced up to the viewing gallery and saw her father, or a man she assumed was her father, given all the medals pinned to his chest. She couldn’t see his face clearly, what with the lights behind him.

“But I don’t!”

“Then we need to put her out so she doesn’t remember this.” Becca recognized Ben’s voice, but where was it coming from? That’s when she saw an oxygen mask descend over her face. They were going to sedate her! She shook her head, not letting them put it over her nose and mouth. What the hell were they going to do to her? That’s when she saw a figure strapped to the table next to her.

What the hell was Steve doing in here?

“That’s right, Dr. Liberty. Your husband is here. If you don’t want anything to happen to him, start talking!” Dr. Harper was still yelling at her. She didn’t understand what the hell was going on.

“Becca, don’t listen to them. It doesn’t matter what they do to me, you can’t tell them what they want to know. Baby, save yourself. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine!”

She shut her eyes as Dr. Sanderson approached him, wielding the same scalpel, and started to slice him open. Tears streamed down Becca’s face as she heard the roar of Steve’s screams getting louder and louder as they open-

-ed her hotel room door as the explosion detonated outside her room. Steve rushed in, covering her body with his, protecting her from the shrapnel flying about the room. Disoriented, she followed Steve out, rushing down hallways as gunfire erupted around them. They regrouped and headed out the hotel. She picked up a map along the way, thinking it might be helpful, and found it was for Anand. _That was in Ugiristan, wasn’t it?_ They made their way out and he led her on a path out of the city. When they were almost in the clear, a band of rebels that had been hot on their trail were just around the corner and they needed to duck into a bombed out storefront to evade them. Steve left her for a few minutes to scout their way out of town. He handed her a loaded pistol before he left. She had no choice but to fend for herself and shot her would-be captor, spewing blood and brains all over. She crawled back under the counter.

“Liberty! Becca, Becca!”

She cowered in the corner.

“Becca, baby, wake up, you’re having a bad dream. Becca, come on baby, wake up.”

She woke, feeling like she’d been drugged. When she saw Steve sitting on the bed with her, she panicked. She yanked his shirt up, felt his chest for any injuries and found nothing. She climbed onto his lap and clung to him as if her life depended upon it.

“Jesus Christ, Rebecca, what’s wrong?”

“Bad dream. Really really really really fucking bad dream. This one was worse than all the others.”

Steve tucked that little piece of information in the back of his mind.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“NO! No no no. Oh God, they were hurting you, they were killing you to try to get me to talk. Oh God, the screaming, the sounds coming out of you were awful. Why would they do that, Steve?”

“Baby, they wouldn’t.”

“No, you don’t understand! Dr. Sanderson was cutting you open, no anesthesia! I heard your screams! Oh my God, I couldn’t save you. I was letting them kill you!”

“Rebecca, it was just a dream. I’m okay, I’m right here. No one’s trying to hurt me.”

He twisted and turned until they were flat on the bed. He grabbed her throw and pulled it over her and held her tight.

“Steve, it was so real. It was like it was really happening or a memory or-”

“No, I can tell you that was not a memory. I’ve never had anyone try to use me to hurt you. I think maybe you need to give Dr. Sanderson a-”

“NO!” Becca burrowed into Steve as much as she could. “I am never seeing that man again. I want nothing to do with him! I need a new doctor. I won’t be able to trust him, not after what he was doing to you!”

“But Becca, come on baby, be rational. He hasn’t done anything to me. He hasn’t really threatened me.”

“What do you mean, hasn’t _really_? How has he threatened you?”

_Crap!_ He had to backtrack out of that one.

“No, not threatened, just scared me, what with the ‘I could permanently damage your memory’ comment.”

“Please, don’t make me go back to see that man. Please?”

“Becca, none of that now, okay? Let’s talk about something else.”

“No, Steve, no talking. Please, just hold me. Don’t let me go.”

“Of course not, baby. Come here.” He held her and it was a while before she felt any peace.

* * *

 

It was a couple hours later. They’d sat down to eat, steaks, baked potatoes and crispy Brussels sprouts with bacon, all cooked to perfection. Becca finally felt like she was capable of relaxing. She knew she’d been trying Steve’s patience, needing to be near him ever since he woke her, but the dream she’d had was the worst of all of them. Even now she could hear his screams. She needed to distract herself.

“So, Steve, don’t take this the wrong way, but when do you go back to work?”

She was happy to hear his laughter.

“Trying to get rid of me already, eh?”

“No, you know that’s not what I mean. When do you have to go back?”

“Well, here’s the thing. I’ve been given leave to stay with you while we work at getting your memory back.”

“Wow. That’s pretty generous of them. Can we afford you taking time off work? I hadn’t even thought about that. Can we afford me being off work?”

“We’re taken care of, baby. Don’t worry about it.”

“But-”

“No, I don’t want to talk about this tonight. Please? We are fine. I don’t want you to get stressed.”

Becca felt like things were being hidden from her again, but knew that wasn’t the case. Steve just didn’t want to talk about anything having to do with her memory problems. She took a deep breath and did what she could to exhale her tension.

“No, I’m sorry, you’re right. I think I’m just still a little on edge.”

“Why? Your dream?”

“Look, I know what you’re gonna say, please don’t.”

“Becca, you don’t.”

“I cannot get your screams out of my head. That’s the problem.” Maybe burying her face in her hands would do the trick?

“Oh, Becca.” Steve lost his appetite. At least they’d had most of their meal; it wouldn’t be a complete waste.

“Look, I know it was just a dream. I know that! But it felt so damn real.”

“Becca, look at me.”

She took her face out of her hands and saw that he was standing next to her.

“Come on, baby, get up.” He helped her out of her chair and she stood in front of him. Without her heels, she felt small next to him. It was part of the reason she felt so safe with him.

“Okay, so, when you woke up, you checked, right? You know I’m not injured, right?”

“Yeah.”

For the life of him he didn’t know why, but she wasn’t convinced.

“How about you check again, baby. Make sure, make 100 percent sure.”

He began unbuttoning his shirt. Becca watched as his fingers teased his buttons free, one at a time.

“But, I felt, I _saw_ earlier, I know you’re okay.”

“No, honey, you didn’t see. You only felt. I want you to see that I’m fine. You hearing me, you feeling me hasn’t been enough.” He finished with his last button and removed his shirt.

Becca took the sight of her husband in, first concentrating on where she would have assumed they would have cut him. When she didn’t notice anything, her hand, slow to approach, hesitated as she checked in with him.

“Of course you can touch me, Bec. Please touch me.”

Her hand traveled the last few inches and she felt for any imperfections her eyes could not see _there were none_ and she slowly felt him. She began at his shoulders, feeling little give as she ran her hands over muscle and bone down to his chest. His hair tickled her fingers and palm as she grazed his skin. She felt his nipples harden against her palm as she passed over first one and then the other. When she sneaked a peek at his face, she saw him lost in her exploration: his eyes almost closed, breathing shallow, and his mouth must have gone dry given how frequently he was licking his lips.

Then she felt something low on his side.

“What’s this?”

“That’s an old injury, Becca. You can tell, it healed a while ago.”

He hated seeing the lines appear in her face. He didn’t like her to worry about him.

“What happened?”

“I got shot.”

“When?”

Steve briefly considered his answer. “The day we met.”

“Oh.” Her hand was gentle as she wrapped her fingers around his side, thumb softly caressing his scar. When she raised her eyes she saw creases in his forehead because of his raised brow, his eyes scrunched closed, like he was trying to make the world disappear.

She misunderstood his reaction, assuming it was pain he was feeling. She yanked her hand away. “I am so sorry-”

“Don’t,” he grabbed for her hand. He was having a hard time speaking. “Don’t apologize.” He put her hand at his waist again, this time covered with his. “That’s just, um, reminiscent of how you used to touch me.”

Becca felt a burning and tightness in her chest as her heart broke. She reached up and cupped his face.

“So much pain. I’m causing you so much pain.”

Steve opened his eyes and saw her starting to punish herself, yelling at herself.

“No, baby. You don’t cause me pain. You could never cause me pain.”

He stooped down, wrapped his arms about her, and picked her up.

“You only give me joy and happiness.”

They kissed before he carried her to their bedroom.

“And love. You fill my heart with love.”

He set her on their bed. Her hands immediately went to work on his belt buckle and he grabbed them, stilling her.

“Steve-”

“No.” He couldn’t look at her. He knew her expressions like the back of his hand. Her lack of memory hadn’t changed her sorrow or her smiles or her laughter. Or her moans. And he was certain they wouldn’t have changed her expression when she wanted something bad enough to ask for it. His Becca rarely asked for anything, but when she did he could never say no to her, unless he was following orders, and even then he was at war with himself.

“Steve, let me take care of you. Let me show you how I feel. I need this, Steve. I need you to know this. To know how I feel. Please let me show you.”

Neither Becca nor Steve had commented on the fact that she had yet to say ‘I love you’ to Steve, at least, not in a way they both wanted her to.

“Rebecca, I know you love me. You don’t need to show me.”

“You’ve shown me so many times, in so many ways, how much you love me. Let me show you. Steve, why won’t you look at me?”

“If I do that, I’ll give in to you.”

“And that would be bad because…”

“Because I’ll give you whatever you want.”

She couldn’t help the soft smile that broke out on her face.

“And that’s a bad thing?” She knew she’d won when she reached for him again and this time he didn’t stop her.

His belt undone, Becca’s eyes traveled to his scar. If he got that the day they met, she realized that chances were he got it protecting her. She pulled on his belt loops, needing him closer. She wrapped her arms around his hips and held on while she bent over and kissed his scar. She closed her eyes and lay her cheek against his stomach and held him. She breathed him in before she turned her head and started kissing across his abdomen, right above the waist of his jeans. She loved that his hairs tickled her nose and lips.

She loved that when she paused, midway between his belly button and his jeans, that he ran his fingers through her hair.

She loved that when she ran her hands from his knees up his thighs, that his fingers clutched her hair.

She loved that when she felt his hardening length through his jeans, lightly stroking, almost petting him, that he moaned and whispered “yes”, the sibilant sound dragging out. And his hand came around and cupped her chin and tilted her head back just before she opened her mouth and his thumb stroked her tongue.

She loved that she saw his eyes roll back, his jaw slacken and his tongue dart out as she sucked on his thumb. She unbuttoned and pulled his zipper down while he was otherwise occupied, but she knew he’d felt it.

She loved that his lips plumped up like they did and became the color or vine-ripened strawberries.

She loved hearing his outcry as her nails scraped down his back to his butt as she pulled his jeans down, slowly, ass first.

She loved that when she was finally able to get the last of his clothes down his legs, pooled at his feet, he still wasn’t completely hard. She preferred for him to get hard in her mouth

And that’s when she grinned. She realized she hadn’t given her husband a blow job since she woke up on the plane. Although everything else had been familiar, and it had been words that she’d been remembering, this was the first sign of something physical that she remembered about him. Sort of.

She slid onto the floor, on her knees, and helped him step out of his jeans. She wiggled her way between his legs and sat on her heels. As she kissed up his thighs she stole a glance at his face and almost moaned herself. He was beautiful. That was the only word she had for him, and it paled in comparison next to him, next to his strong jaw softened by his beard and his plump lips.

And he was all hers.

Becca wrapped her arms around his legs and felt her way up the backs of his thighs as she continued kissing and nibbling up. Her fingertips grazed where his legs joined at the ‘V’ and he almost toppled over.

“Mmmm.” Becca couldn’t get enough. Not enough of the slightly salty taste of his skin, not enough of his heady musk that was just beginning to make its presence known, and not nearly enough of the sounds coming from him. She didn’t want to stop, but she needed to.

“Baby, get on the bed.”

When he was on his back and no longer was in danger of falling over, she finally relaxed. She’d wanted to feel Steve, to get to know his familiar body again, what would make him laugh or sigh or moan. He was so in control all the time. She wanted him to relinquish that control to her.

“Becca, why aren’t you naked yet?”

“Because this isn’t about me.”

“But I want-”

“Steve, this isn’t about what you want. This is about what I want for you, to do to you. And what I want right now is to enjoy my husband and give him immense pleasure. Do you think you can handle that?”

She got the nod she was looking for.

She straddled his waist and gazed down at him. He ran his hands up and down her thighs before he beckoned her closer.

“Becca, kiss me. Kiss me the way you want to, not the way you think I want you to.”

“Are you sure you want me to do that?”

“Yes.”

She started soft before she bit his lip. Becca was pretty sure she could nibble on his lip all day long. She slipped back into a passionate kiss as his arms wrapped around her. Then, she began to get a little rough with him: she nibbled her way down his chin and neck to his chest. She took his arms from her and wove their fingers, holding his hands at his sides as she inched her body down his, continuing to nibble and bite along the way. She felt his hand grip hers as she passed over his abdomen. She decided to go back at a later time, see what all the fuss was about. She was on a mission and wanted him to give up control.

Steve wanted to free his hands. He needed to watch what his Becca was doing and to do that, he needed to get her hair out of the way. He was in familiar waters with her. The intensity with which she was exploring him _was_ his Becca. She wasn’t a shy or timid woman. She was bold and took charge when she wanted. She was normally a bit submissive when they made love, but only in the sense of wanting him to call the shots. It was infrequent, her taking charge in their lovemaking, but when she did, she was amazing.

She slowed her approach at his bellybutton. She needed to adjust her body and had to let go of Steve’s hands.

Becca gently let go and pulled her hands from his. She got to her knees and nudged his legs apart and tilted her head to the side, gently kissing his thigh as she settled. His musky scent was strong and she got a flash of being on her knees in front of him, naked, as he cradled her, one hand on either side of her head, and flooded her mouth with his tangy sweetness. She was sure it was him, his scent was the same, she was positive! But she still couldn’t see his face. So frustrating!

Maybe, just maybe she’d get another flash as she continued.

She closed her eyes and inhaled as her tongue darted out, intent on tasting him. She remembered the weight of him on her tongue and in her mouth. She enticed him strictly using her instincts, not remembering anything specific he liked, but hoping that she was headed in the right direction.

She wasn’t ready to take him into her mouth, not quite yet. Well, not that part of him. Instead, she nudged in, feeling for and finding his sac. She licked at the wrinkled flesh and huffed a silent laugh when Steve jerked and moaned. She quickly intercepted his hand, the one that was aimed at her head, as she enveloped one of his balls and took him into her warm mouth, gently stroking him with her tongue.

“Oh, God, Becca, just like that baby. Fuck, you’ve always known what I like.”

Becca loved the encouragement and kept massaging him. She was having a bit of trouble with her neck, though, with the odd angle. Then she thought of something.

Steve whined when she stopped and got up. Becca decided to see if he could figure out what she wanted. She grabbed a pillow and dropped it onto the floor at the foot of their bed, kneeling on it. The quizzical expression on his face told her that he wasn’t understanding, until she saw the light bulb go off. She shouldn’t have been surprised he could move that quickly. She got him positioned just how she wanted him and picked up where she left off. Quickly. So quickly, in fact, that Steve wasn’t ready for her. He jerked so hard he almost kneed her in the head.

“Am I going to need to get a football helmet to protect myself?”

They both had a good laugh until Becca pushed him back onto the bed.

“Bec, why don’t you come up here and join me?”

“And miss out on all the fun I’m having down here? I think not. Now, be a good boy and lay down.”

This time, she put her arms over his legs and rather than picking up where she left off, she licked the length of him and heard the most gorgeous sound. With all the maneuvering and shenanigans and almost injury, he’d lost a some of his erection, and she enjoyed feeling it come back to life.

Becca kept her jaw soft as she pursed her lips around his head, slowly taking him in, feeling the flesh of his head scrape along the roof of her mouth, tickling her. She laughed and hummed and Steve couldn’t help himself as he sat up, propped on one hand. His hands needed her.

“That’s it, nice and slow, baby.” She couldn’t see his face anymore, but Becca imagined his eyes rolling back in his head as he ran his hand through her hair, pulling it away from her face. She took her time bobbing her head down and up and down again, and she began to use her tongue. She wanted to feel his thighs shake. She wanted him to involuntarily grab her hair. She wanted him to lose himself in her.

She couldn’t take all of him in, that just wasn’t possible, so she brought her hand to her mouth and began stroking him in tandem, gradually increasing the pressure, not a lot, but enough to be noticeable.

After a while, she changed it up, her mouth and lips and tongue paying special attention to his head, dipping her tongue into the slit to taste his salty essence before swirling it around and finding that spot that had him tightening his grip. She couldn’t help the moan.

“You like it when I grab you like that, baby?”

“Mmmhmm.”

“I love that you know just what I like.” His voice was darker, raspier, and she knew it was only a matter of time. Becca got to her knees and sped up just a little as her other hand sought and gently cupped his balls.

“You want me to come in your mouth, don’t you?”

She increased her pressure just a little as she hummed her answer.

His hand spasmed in her hair and he brought them both around to cradle her head as his thighs shook in his restraint. She felt his body get ready as his balls pulled up and heard his breathing get erratic. He shouted through his release and Becca had a sense of déjà vu and the familiar taste of him in her mouth.

When he finally collapsed on the bed, she got up and straddled him. She didn’t remember any more than she had, but it was a nugget and she was going to hold onto it as tightly as she could. She almost told him, but remembered he didn’t want them to talk about her memories tonight.

Becca waited for Steve’s breathing to become a bit more regular. In the meantime, she kissed his neck and the hollow of his throat as her fingernails scratched at his jaw. The moment his head tilted to press to her hand she knew he was back. She kissed her way back to his mouth and he quickly flipped them as she squealed. It was his turn to caress her face. Several times he opened his mouth, like he was going to say something, but didn’t.

“What?”

“What what?”

“You look like you want to say something.”

“If I do, I’m going back on what I asked for tonight. It can wait.”

“You sure? I don’t mind.”

“No, baby. I got something else on my mind.”

“What’s that?”

“You are going to get exactly what you deserve after that.”

Becca knew she could always count on Steve to be true to his word. He didn’t disappoint.

It was several hours later that she finally drifted off to sleep, wrapped securely in Steve's arms. It was the first night that Becca got a full night’s sleep. No crazy dreams to interrupt her.


	6. Chapter 6

During the course of the next week and a half, Becca wrote everything, absolutely everything, she could think of. She found that she knew a lot more than she’d realized. There were small details that revealed themselves as she typed stuff up (she would never finish if she hand wrote everything as Dr. Harper would have preferred), like that she’d asked for a very specific wine when they first got home from Italy (‘The’ Pinot Grigio). She’d been referring to a particular vineyard they’d visited when they first started dating.

She sat back in her chair with that realization, pondering how it was that she couldn’t remember Steve, but she could remember her favorite wine that she found with him. That did not make any sense. What did she know about Steve? Well, not a whole hell of a lot since he wouldn’t tell her anything about himself. She knew his job had something to do with her job, that they met because of her job…

And that’s when she had realized that the people, the things, the parts of her life that she couldn’t remember, that were a complete blank slate, all seemed to be tied, in some way, to her work. Her father was somehow involved with what she did and he was a complete unknown to her. It was how she’d met Steve, it was what all of her schoolwork had led to. All of her friends were from work and she couldn’t remember any of them. Everything seemed to be pointing back to her job.

She was kind of remembering bits and pieces about Steve, things that had nothing to do with her work. She remembered taking that weekend and going to Napa. She didn’t remember him, but she remembered being in Napa with someone and having a lot of fun. When she asked him about that trip, though, she could see his frustration with her wanting to talk about something else from their past, go over it in detail, dissect it, but she was insistent. She would brook no refusal. She was finally able to get him to see the light when she told him this was the first thing that she’d remembered on her own, without a conversation with him about it. For some reason that seemed to make a difference. He still wouldn’t divulge any information, but at least he wasn’t upset about her wanting more than he was willing to give.

It all had to be because of her job. What the hell did she do? And why on earth would she be blocking her memories to her job? It was the only thing that made sense. Had something traumatic happened at the office of which she wasn’t aware? She really wanted to get to the bottom of this.

She was scared, though. And she didn’t know who she could trust. Could she trust Dr. Harper? She didn’t trust Dr. Sanderson, but she was being told she needed to trust him, to talk to him, to confide in him. But his whole ‘wait and see’ approach just was not cutting it.

What if, during one of her sessions, she accidentally leaked some classified information to Dr. Harper? She’d been pressing more and more about her work, agreeing with Becca that that seemed to be a focal point of her memory loss. Absolutely nothing was gained, though, by that line of questioning. It was after her fourth session when the doctor kept after and kept after her about her work that she started to sense something was off. She didn’t know what, though, so she didn’t say anything that would call attention to the fact that she was beginning to wonder about her.

It was the middle of the second week of her writing that Becca and Steve had a bit of a disagreement as to whether or not she should be writing anything at all. He was of the ‘Dr. Sanderson hasn’t approved it’ camp. Becca was in the ‘Dr. Sanderson is dead to me’ camp. Needless to say, they vehemently agreed to disagree. That, and Becca told him what he could do with his opinion about her chosen methodology for trying to recover her memories.

That made for a very stressful night. Her dreams had been even more vivid and brutal. This time when they cut into Steve, he was behind some sort of a curtain, but she could see his outline. She saw him struggle against his bonds and his screams echoed off the walls and she thought she'd go mad. It was when Dr. Sanderson came out from behind the curtain and she saw him covered in blood so red it seemed to glow that she woke with a scream in her throat. She really hoped that, once she recovered her memories, the imagery and the sounds would go away. She got out of bed, just after 3:30, and went into the living room. She couldn’t get his screams out of her head. More than anything else, that sound haunted her.

Steve found her just before dawn the next morning curled up in his chair-her preferred place in their house, second only to their bed-and tried to take her back to bed. She refused to go with him, instead opting to remain obstinate. They didn’t talk for most of the day. Steve knew better than to approach her when she got like this. She needed to cool down enough that she could hear anyone else’s argument. He did not want to have to go to Dr. Sanderson about this.

When they hadn’t spoken by late in the afternoon, though, Steve decided to end the nonsense. He couldn’t handle the silence. This was the longest she’d ever given him the silent treatment.

She’d been in her study all day typing away. Knowing his Becca, she was probably noting things like the time of day and what she’d been eating and what she’d been thinking about or doing for each of her memories, trying to find any pattern she possibly could. He was curious as to what she’d remembered that she hadn’t told him about, but that was to be for another time, another conversation.

She didn’t hear the knock at her study door. She had her headphones in and was busy typing away, as she had been for the past several days, putting everything down that she possibly could remember. Steve had been right. Because there were so many variables, she ended up creating a database so she could look for patterns and find the key to getting her memories back.

Steve was at a bit of a loss as to what to do. The general rule in the house was, and this applied to both of them: their offices were sacrosanct; neither was allowed to enter the other’s private space unless invited in. He knew, though, that she couldn’t hear him if she was doing what she normally did: listening to music.

Steve tried knocking. When that didn’t get a response, he tried calling her name, then banging on the door, then yelling. Luckily for him, there was a lull in her music as her song switched over so she heard the commotion he was making. He stopped banging on the door when she yanked it open.

“What the fuck are you going on about? Why didn’t you just come in?”

“Obviously you don’t remember that rule. I’m not allowed in your office unless you invite me.” He wasn’t going to tell her about all the times he’d been in her office without her knowledge, though.

“Oh. I’m sorry, I had my headphones in and I guess I had the music turned up. Come on in.” He’d knocked the wind out of her sails.

Steve had initially wanted to have the conversation on neutral turf, but he realized Becca would probably feel safer in her own office. That thought stopped him. She’d feel safer in dealing with her own husband. He hated this.

He sat on her thinking couch and not for the first time, marveled over her office. You’d think someone involved with genetics would have their work space all clean and shiny, all new and full of chrome and sleek glass.

Not Becca.

Yes, she did have all of her books in digital form, but she also had all of them in physical form, too. They lined two of her walls in her floor to ceiling custom wood bookshelves. When they’d bought the house, she worked with a contractor to get them installed before they moved in. They cost as much as a family car, but she didn’t care. The cost was even greater because she’d insisted they be made from sustainable bamboo. In fact, everything she’d added to her office, to their whole house, was either sustainable or recycled. She may have had her head either in books or attached to a microscope or computer for her whole life, but that didn’t mean Becca didn’t have other interests.

Steve was pretty sure that she’d read all of them, every single book, cover to cover. Anyone could pick up any of her books and see the notes in the margins or on Post-its. Or pertinent passages highlighted. He was also positive that she could recall almost everything she’d ever read with perfect clarity. She didn’t have a photographic memory. She said she didn’t, but he still thought she did. She claimed she simply remembered. Everything.

He was pretty sure that was why, deep down, this issue with her memory was bothering her so much.

The wall that housed her desk displayed all of her artwork, everything that she’d purchased over the years. It also had her degrees and honors and achievements. Every patent was framed and up on her wall. Every article about her, too. Steve wondered if she ever looked up while she was in here trying to recover her memories. A lot of her work was noted up on that wall, it just might spark something. A good portion would never be written about, but what was on that wall just might be the spark she needed. He wasn't about to tell her that, though, not with what he was dealing with.

When he saw that Becca was going to go back to sitting at her desk, Steve couldn’t stop himself.

“Bec, could you come over here and sit with me?”

He saw her stiffen. Great, she was still angry. He knew one thing that should work in his favor, something he knew she needed from him. He softened his voice even more.

“Becca, please? I’d like to talk with you about last night.”

She sat in the far corner, as far away as she could get from him. She certainly wasn’t going to make this easy. She didn’t even let him say what he’d wanted to, what he’d prepared.

“Steve, where does your loyalty lie?”

“What do you mean?”

“Everything that we’ve talked about in terms of my memory has been ‘security clearance’ this and ‘job’ that to come out of your mouth. You talk about loving me, but, seriously, it’s more like you’re my warden than my husband. Are you married to your job or are you married to me?”

Becca may as well have slapped Steve.

He spoke not a word as he got up and walked out, closing the door behind him.

She was his Becca, but she also wasn’t. She knew just what to say to draw blood the fastest, to go for the deepest wound. He’d seen her do it with her father. He’d never been on the receiving end himself, though. First time for everything.

He knew he needed to get out of there before he went back into her office and said things he’d regret. He changed into his running gear and took off.

Becca could be so infuriating!

Steve needed his run to quiet his mind. Seriously, she was actually questioning if he was loyal to her? That hurt. It tore him in two.

Mile after mile passed under his feet as he trekked over roads and paths, trying to outrun the shit that was playing in his head: that she wasn’t going to ever remember him. He kept telling himself that Becca was getting better, was remembering.

She just wasn’t remembering him. He wasn’t worthy enough for her to remember him.

By the time the voices in his head had quieted, he was ready to turn for home. He used the last few minutes of his run to figure out what he was going to say to her.

He stripped off his soaked gear and showered before looking for her. He knew he’d been gone a while. He hadn’t realized how long until he found her, curled up on his chair, eyes red and puffy, tears still streaming down her face.

This person was not his Becca.

He reached out and wiped the hair from her brow before heading out back. He came back in with an armload of wood and had a fire blazing within minutes. He headed back to their bedroom and grabbed her blanket. She always seemed to calm when cocooned with him.

He picked her up and they sat in his chair, she on his lap and in his arms, the blanket wrapped around them.

“I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t want to hurt you but I did and I knew what was coming out of my mouth was going to hurt and I couldn’t stop myself from saying those awful, hurtful words. I’m so sorry, Steve.”

“I know you are, baby. Just shhh for now. Let’s just be here like this for a bit, okay?”

Neither of them slept, but they did close their eyes. They did wrap their arms around and hold each other close. Steve felt her tears soak through his shirt before she stopped and calmed. And they started up again. He stroked her back and tucked her under his chin and let her cry. He didn’t like it when she cried, but he knew this was what she needed.

She finally calmed and her tears stopped. He didn’t stop holding her, though, cradling her in his arms. He knew she needed this. She’d let him know when she’d had enough.

The fire had died down and was mostly embers by the time Becca was ready to come up for air.

“Steve?” She could barely get his name out.

“Becca, don’t.”

“But Steve, you need to know I’m sorry. I need to make this right somehow.” He heard her distress in her shaky voice. He held her closer for a few moments before tilting her head back and wiping the fresh tears from her face.

“Baby, you don’t ever cry, and that’s all you’re doing now. I can’t even imagine what’s going through your head. The strongest person I’ve ever known now cries at the drop of a hat. Becca, it’s killing me not to say anything to you. The woman I love more than life itself doesn’t recognize me, doesn’t know me. I want nothing more than to talk to you about us, to help you remember.”

His Becca would have fought back, would have railed at him. She didn’t.

“Then why don’t you?”

“If I do and they find out?” A war waged within that he finally had had enough with. “You’ll never see me again.”

It was a few moments before she spoke. “Wait a minute. What?”

It was one thing to hint at something; it was something else entirely to say it out loud. Steve prepared himself for what he was about to unleash. “I’m being threatened with treason. They’ve told me they’ll charge me under the Patriot Act, and I’ll never come out from under that.”

“If you tell me stuff, about our life?” He nodded. “Treason? What the fuck? Steve, this just doesn’t make sense to me? Why on earth am I so important?” Her anger was on its way back.

“I swear, Becca, I only know that you do something in genetics. That’s it. I promise.”

“Okay, so who threatened you?”

He’d known this conversation was going to be hard. Should he say? He knew he could only expect honesty from her if he gave it. “Your father.”

“My father. Not…?” He could tell she hadn't been expecting that answer. “That doesn’t sound like a very ‘dad’ thing to do.” He half rolled his eyes in response but still kept his mouth shut. Plausible deniability. “Do I get along with him?”

“What makes you ask that?”

“Um, how about he’s threatening my husband with treason if he doesn’t play by his rules? Also, and I know you don’t want to hear it, but the dream I keep having.”

Steve thought for a bit. How to answer?

“Wait. The dream, you keep having?"

“No, I see what you’re doing. You’re not side-tracking this. Do I get along with him?”

Steve wondered if he shouldn't pursue her persistent dream. He decided to table it, for the moment. “No, you don’t get along with him. You haven’t for as long as I’ve known you, and from what you’ve told me, it’s gotten worse the past couple of years.”

There was something he wasn't saying. Becca needed to understand. “Do you get along with him?”

“He's your father so I tolerate him.”

“Wait, the past couple of years. Does he not approve of us?”

Steve had been hoping her memory would come back and he’d never have to put her through that again.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Can we table that for now?"

"No-"

"Becca, this is a really sore subject for us and when you get your memory back, we won’t have to go through it again.”

It was his tone that got her to stop from confronting him. “Does he come between us?”

“No, but there is something we disagree about. We’ve put it behind us. I don’t want to go over it again. I don't want to have that argument again.”

It took everything in Becca not to pursue whatever it was. For now she’d honor Steve’s request.

“So, my father is threatening you with treason if you don’t report back to, who, him? On my progress? My memory? What?”

“Well, him, now that Dr. Sanderson isn’t taking my calls anymore.”

“Okay. So, I don’t get along with my father. He and Dr. Sanderson are in cahoots, somehow?” Steve nodded. “And this is all related to my job. Dr. Sanderson is advocating a treatment course that is asinine, and everyone is supposed to just go along with it, because treason is being used as the stick.”

Steve was silent as Becca talked it out. She couldn’t even begin to fathom what she was up against.

“When were you threatened?”

“After you woke up in Italy and I’d made arrangements to have other doctors come in and look at you, see what was up.”

“So, it’s been weeks.”

Steve closed his eyes and was silent. He couldn’t stand to see the disappointment on Becca’s face.

“You’ve been hiding this from me for weeks?”

Steve was still silent.

“Steve?”

He hated hearing how disappointed she was, but he owed it to her. He steadied himself and then opened his eyes. He was surprised. He saw his pain, not her disappointment, echoed on her face, etched into the lines in her forehead.

Becca began stroking his cheek with the backs of her fingers.

“They’ve made you keep this from me, haven’t they?”

He nodded.

“They have you on a short leash somehow, don’t they?”

Again, he nodded.

“What are they threatening you with, besides treason?”

“To take you away from me. Lock you away somewhere.”

“Wait, my father is threatening to lock me up.”

When Steve nodded, Becca shuddered. The realization of what she was facing began to sink in. And here Steve had been, bearing the burden of this knowledge.

“I’ve got only a couple more days to get you back into Dr. Sanderson’s office or they’ll cart you off.”

Becca’s blood ran cold.

“When?”

“If you don’t see him by Friday night, they’re coming to get you Saturday morning, at least, that’s what I’ve been told. But, I wouldn’t be surprised if they came Friday.”

He saw her wheels turning and didn’t disturb her. She often saw things that no one else could even grasp until she pointed them out. He wanted to give her the space she needed.

“Steve, I’ve got some things I need to ask.”

“Becca, I don’t-”

“Steve, I think we’re past that now. Have I ever been to Ugiristan?

His very nature meant he was still cautious, but he wanted to help. He decided not to out and out tell her stuff, but if she asked, he’d answer, honestly. It didn’t mean that he’d just offer up information, though.

“Do you remember being there, in Ugiristan?”

“I want to say yes, but at the same time I just don’t know. I mean, is it even a country? Was I actually there?”

He couldn't help his chuckle. “Yes, it is, and you have been there. It’s where we met.”

“We were in Anand, weren’t we? Was there an explosion? Something like that?”

“You’re thinking of your dream, aren’t you?”

It was Becca’s turn to simply nod.

“Your dream is based on fact, somewhat, at least.”

“Okay, we’ll come back to that one later. My next question. Were we really in Italy, when we got hit by that truck?”

“Yeah, of course we were in Italy. Why?”

“Was I married before you?”

“No, not unless you hid it from me. Your college boyfriend proposed, but you didn’t want to marry him. He wanted to keep dating you, hoping you’d change your mind, but you broke up with him. You told me that you’d never thought you’d get married, that no man would ever see you for who you really are.” He decided to forgo the other reasons she’d said no, for now. “Why? Are you remembering him?” If she was remembering that fucker and not him, he didn’t know what he’d do.

She shook her head as she asked another question.

“Do you remember his name?”

“Ben, last name was, give me a sec, cow, bull, B, B, Braford, or Bradford. It’s a breed of cow. We can find out from the obits if you need to know it.”

“The obits. You mean the obituaries?”

“Yeah, he died around the time we got engaged. We went to his memorial.”

The look of utter terror on Becca’s face was unmistakable.

“Then who’s been contacting me?”

“I’m sorry?" Steve was on full alert. "Did you just say someone’s contacting you? When did this happen?”

“Someone claiming to be someone named Ben Braford approached me. First expressed relief that I wasn’t dead. Oh, god, what have I done? I’ve talked to him twice. Are they going to lock me up?”

Becca couldn’t remember ever having been held as tightly as she was at that moment.

“No, we’re not telling anyone any of this, at least, not until we know what's going on.”

“But that’s not all, Steve. There’s more. There's more I haven't told you.”

“Is it more than you’re seeing another psychiatrist?”

He could see that was a shock to her.

“You know about that?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“After they day where you were gone for six hours, and then you left at the same time a couple of days apart. I knew you were going somewhere, had some kind of appointment. I’ve had someone tailing you when you left the house.”

“You had me followed?” He could tell she was getting pissed again when she started struggling to get up, but he wasn’t about to let her off his lap.

“Baby, you lied to me when you got home, when you said you’d spent the day window shopping.”

He could almost see the ‘oh, yeah’ bubble appear over her head. Her anger seemed to dissipate quickly after that.

“How did you know I lied?”

“Becca, honey, you are one of the most honest people I know. You’re not capable of lying. You normally can look right at me, no matter how hard the conversation is. When you lie, you can’t make eye contact, at all. Simple, really. Come on, try it. Tell me you were out window shopping.”

Becca looked at him and tried, she tried to prove him wrong, but she couldn’t. She remembered a woman’s voice, soft and distant: ‘you can’t lie worth a damn, Becca, don’t even try’. Who was that?

“You can’t do it, can you?”

She shook her head as tears started to fall.

“Come here, baby.”

He rocked her as he held her tightly. He took his time before his next question. He didn’t want to upset her too much.

“Are you sure you can’t go to Dr. Sanderson?”

“He frightens me, and I don’t trust him.”

“Okay, let’s set him aside for the moment. What about this guy claiming to be Ben Braford? Can you tell me about him?” He did what he could to keep his voice calm.

Becca went into great detail about the man. She gave a complete description (‘a few inches taller than me, he’s got really dark brown hair, but it’s starting to go grey. He’s got a pretty high forehead. He has dark brown eyes He wears rectangular glasses. He’s got a goatee, and a strong jaw, but not nearly as strong as yours, pretty prominent cheekbones. He’s a good looking guy. He’s not nearly as handsome as you are’) and then talked about the two conversations she’d had with him, and how inconsistent he’d been from the beginning. She was bouncing back and forth between the two conversations, connecting dots along the way, so she was telling things out of order. Steve had seen her like this before and while it was impossible for him to follow, he knew that once she did this and connected all the dots in her head, she’d be able to go back and discuss everything in chronological order. It was when she began talking about taking his picture and heading to the police that she realized she’d taken it. She retrieved her phone and went into her pictures. It wasn’t there.

In fact, all of her pictures were gone. She started to panic.

“Bec, remem-, oh, sorry, we set everything up so that your phone would sync all your pictures to the cloud and to your laptop.”

“But I never sync’d them.”

“It’s automatic.”

She retrieved her laptop and pulled up her files. Sure enough, he was there.

Kind of.

He’d partially blocked her shot of him, and he was a little blurry, but it was definitely him.

He was absolutely not the real Ben. Steve pulled up the obituary for Ben and they were nothing alike: shape of the face and hair and eye color were all different. While she was upset she couldn’t remember Ben, she knew Steve would have been more upset if she had.

When she continued her rehashing, Steve realized just how much she’d been keeping inside of her. He listened and did his best not to comment, other than to ask questions (so, he was the reason you asked to see your passport, wasn’t he?). He didn’t want her to feel like he was chastising her or grilling her. She was having a hard enough time as it was.

Although he was mostly quiet as she recounted what had been happening, his mind was racing. When she told how Ben was the one who’d mentioned Ugiristan, along with everything else he’d been saying, Steve had many thoughts. The first was that ‘Ben’ was trying to drive a wedge between them. He was trying to get her not to trust him. A second thought, though, was the one that turned his blood to ice. All of this, absolutely everything, had to do with her work. That started him thinking. Had the accident really been an accident? Was her father involved in any of this?

Becca misunderstood Steve’s change in demeanor.

“I have to remember. I need to remember. I can’t continue to hurt you like I am.”

“You’re not hurting me.”

“Do me the courtesy of being honest with me.”

“Becca, I am being honest. You are not hurting me. The memory problem you are having is hurting me. You didn’t do this to yourself.”

Steve didn’t have all the details, but he was pretty sure he didn’t need them.

Many things were coming together and starting to make sense.


	7. Chapter 7

It was the next morning that things started taking a bit of a turn for Becca.

She and Steve had a good night, as good as could be expected, at least. Naturally Becca had wanted to keep talking, learning as much as she could from Steve. He was finally able to make a deal with her: she would go see Dr. Sanderson as soon as she could and, after the appointment, they’d talk. Steve was happy when she agreed. He didn’t want them carting her away to who knows where. That would tear him apart.

She called the office and was able to get an appointment for late that morning. She hoped she didn’t sound as shaky as she felt. She was having problems knowing she was heading in to see a man who haunted her dreams.

Becca walked into the kitchen to grab some coffee and try to figure out what she was going to do to get rid of the feeling of dread taking hold of her. She saw her husband in his boxer briefs and stopped in her tracks. Not for the first time since waking on the plane she wondered why this gorgeous, smart, sweet, loving, and patient man had fallen for her. Surely he had any number of women throw themselves at him. Women who were just as intelligent or accomplished, but didn’t have her crazy life or a strained relationship with their father. Why her?

Steve heard her come in. He’d heard her make the appointment and, knowing that she was most likely dreading her meeting with the doctor, he pulled out her favorite mug: _What did the one sister chromatid say to the other? Stop copying me!_ He hadn’t handed it to her in the morning yet and was wondering if she’d smile or giggle like she normally did. Would she get it? Would she laugh? He knew that if she didn’t react, she wouldn’t understand the reaction he’d do his damnedest to hide from her. He’d be devastated and she wouldn’t know.

He fixed her coffee and picked up his favorite mug, the one she’d given him after he’d complained that her coffee cups, the one that came with the china she used, were entirely too small for a good cup of coffee. It was only the second time he’d stayed the night. He was testing the waters, seeing if she was going to be worth the total mess he knew she’d make of his life. She’d huffed a laugh and he wasn’t sure what to make of her reaction, but he wasn’t going to make a hasty decision, either (probably because he was already head over heels for her). The next time he was there, a couple of mornings later, she’d handed him coffee in the mug he was now carrying: _People who hate the Marines are rotten to the Corps._ When she did that he knew she was absolutely worth anything and everything that came his way.

He took a sip as he turned and walked towards her. He almost choked on his coffee when he saw what she was wearing. The purpose behind using _her_ mug that morning was forgotten.

“What are you wearing?”

“Um, your shirt that was on the floor?”

He knew he was staring, but he couldn’t help it. He was sure he looked like he was trying to will that one button she’d fastened to come undone using the power of his mind.

“Why are you wearing it?”

“I didn’t want to grab my robe when all I’m doing is coming down for my coffee before I jump in the shower. I’m sorry, is this a problem?”

He didn’t know how she did it, sounding innocent but looking sexy as hell.

“You? In my shirt? I’ll bet you’re not wearing anything under it, are you?” The slight head tilt-smirk combination that was her _you’re just gonna have to find out for yourself_ answer got to him. She knew what she was doing! “That is always a problem for me. Get your ass over here.”

Becca heard the drop in his voice and the trepidation she’d had for her appointment was quickly shoved aside as she felt her body respond to him.

Steve saw the deep rose flush rise from the tops of her breasts up her neck and to her cheeks. He loved it when he had that effect on her.

When she got to him, he handed her the mug. By the look on her face, she wasn’t expecting that move.

“My Becca needs her coffee to function and you, most definitely, need to be in top functioning form today. Drink your coffee.”

“That was so not what I was expecting.” She took a sip and hummed her approval before reaching up for a kiss.

“Well, I overheard you making your appointment. If you’d taken the one this afternoon instead of this morning, trust me, you wouldn’t be standing right now.”

“What would I be doing?”

“Nope. Not gonna tell you. That’s for later. For now, you need to go take your shower and get ready. We’ll talk before you leave, make sure you know the things you need to be careful about saying to him.”

“Yeah, about that. I’ve been thinking and I want you there with me, in my appointment with me.”

Becca almost laughed at the surprise she saw on Steve’s face.

“Dr. Sanderson won’t like that. He won’t want that at all. He doesn’t want me in there.”

“I don’t care what he likes or wants, this is my session, my memory, my life, not his.” Steve smiled as he heard his Becca. He loved her strong, no nonsense style. That’s why his heart broke when he heard her retreating. “I know I have to see him. Steve, I need you there; I’m scared. This isn’t you trying to be in my session, like before. This is me wanting you there to support me, hold my hand… hold me if need be. I’m going to be the one insisting on you being in there, not you. Not like last time.”

“He’s not-”

She knew where he was going and didn’t need to have that conversation again. “Look, I know he doesn’t want you there. He hasn’t told me why. Did he ever tell you?”

“Only that I’ll interfere.”

“I don’t understand why he thinks you’d interfere. I want you in there. This time, when he tries to shoo you out, maybe he’ll explain himself better.”

“Are you sure you want me there? I mean, if you have a breakthrough and you might not want me there.”

“If I have a breakthrough? I absolutely want you there.”

“What if you start talking about work?”

“I don’t think that’ll happen. I think my memory problem is all tied back to work somehow and I think that’ll be the last thing I remember.”

He hadn’t bought into that concept before, but the more he thought about what she’d said yesterday, and early this morning when they were in bed together, he wondered if she wasn’t right. _Of course she’s going to be right. She’s always right._

“Bec, why don’t you go jump in the shower and get ready. I don’t want you to end up rushing and feeling flustered. It’ll be bad enough that we’re going to see him. You don’t need any added stress.”

Instead of turning and heading out of the kitchen, she took a step towards him.

“Join me?”

He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

“We’ll never get there on time if I do. Besides, you won’t be able to talk after I’m done with you, so your appointment would be a waste of time. Nope. You go now. I’ll shower after.”

“Boo.”

It was a pout of epic proportions that she leveled at him. He appreciated her effort.

“I’m serious, Becca, you’re not going to be able to talk, you’ll be so hoarse from all the screaming.”

He watched as her eyes grew darker. He was doing everything in his power to remain in control.

“You promise?”

He loved hearing how turned on she got just from a few words.

“I’ll do better than that. I guarantee.” He turned her around and as she walked away, he swatted her on her butt. It took everything he had, but he didn’t follow her, not even after he heard her moan.

* * *

They arrived ten minutes before her appointment. They didn’t want to be too early and Steve didn’t want Becca rushing around right before seeing this man who was giving her a hard time. He was glad he’d insisted that she start to get ready early, considering it took her more time than normal to decide what to wear. He’d heard her muttering to herself as she worked through trying to come up with the right look. When he heard her reprimand herself with _of course I can’t wear a suit, he knows I’m not working so it’ll look like I’m trying too hard_ he knew he needed to be there for this appointment. His Becca never fretted over what to wear.

As they sat in the waiting room, Steve noticed that Becca was keeping her hands busy picking at the invisible lint on her slacks and her jacket. It wasn’t until he took her hand in his, though, that he realized she’d been holding her breath as she slowly exhaled. Her tension didn’t melt away, but he did see that she found some comfort from his touch. He’d never seen her this nervous.

When he came out to get her, Dr. Sanderson was surprised to see Steve, and his eyebrows almost met with his hairline when Steve joined them in his office.

“Steve, we’ve talked about this. I don’t want you in here. You’ll change the dynamics of this confidential session.”

“How’s that?” Becca had insisted she would be the one to take charge of this part of the conversation since it was her request.

“Well, if you happen to remember something that is covered by your security clearance, for one.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be talking about my work, I’d be talking about the fact that I remember my work. Besides, whenever it is that I do remember my work, Steve wouldn’t understand what I’d be talking about anyway. For that matter, you wouldn’t, either.”

“You seem to forget, I am a doctor, Becca.”

“And you seem to forget I am also a doctor. I’d appreciate it if you’d address me as such. Like you, I earned the title.”

Red-faced Dr. Sanderson was clearly flustered

“Besides, this is a professional relationship, not a personal one. I only invite my friends to call me by my given name.”

She wasn’t sure if the splotches on his neck indicated rage or embarrassment.

“And you might be an MD, but you are most certainly not a geneticist. While you might know something of the human body, you will not comprehend what I’d be talking about. I’m told very few people can.”

The doctor had taken his seat and wasn’t looking at her, clearly trying to control his response. When Becca made that statement, though, he couldn’t make eye contact fast enough. He’d obviously been told that his gaze was intimidating and relied on that.

“Who told you that?”

The problem was, while Becca might have been terrified, she wasn’t intimidated by anyone when it came to her work; of that she was sure.

“The articles written about me. So, now that we’ve established clearance isn’t an issue, what other objections do you have?”

It was clear he was reaching, trying to figure out any way he could to keep Steve out of her session.

“It’s entirely possible that you’ll remember something that he’s not aware of. That could be awkward for you.”

Becca resisted the urge to correct his grammar. Obviously she’d flustered him. He was trying another tactic and she saw right through him. Steve couldn’t have been prouder.

“Then how about I’m the one to make that call and not you. It is my awkwardness, not yours. It should be up to me, not you.”

“But-”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Doctor, but this is my session, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes.”

“Why do you think your opinions should outweigh my wishes?”

“Excuse me?”

“I asked him to join me.”

“You asked him?”

“Yes. I want him in here.”

“But he’s going to interfere.”

“That’s prejudicial on your part. In therapy, aren’t you supposed to be open-minded and not lead me down a particular path?” When he made no move to answer her, she pressed on. “Aren’t you, _Doctor_?”

“Well-”

“Good, I’m glad we agree on that. Then if there are no other objections…” Dr. Sanderson realized she was waiting for a response so he shook his head. “Then how about we get started?”

The doctor didn’t know it, but Steve could see it. Her attitude wasn’t her normal one. She was clearly overcompensating for the fear she was feeling. He wanted to protect her, but he knew he couldn’t.

He sure did love it, though, when she got feisty.

“Okay, Rebecca, we’ll try it your way.”

Steve saw Becca’s eyes narrow and her lips all but disappeared. She mirrored her father’s angry expression. She sure was her father’s daughter when she got angry, but Steve would  _never_  have the guts to say that to her.

“I did not invite you to be so informal with me, did I?”

It was clear Dr. Sanderson didn’t like being put in his place.

“No, you didn’t, Doctor. As you wish.” He took a moment, trying to regain control of the session. “Am I to take it that you’re starting to get some of your memory back?”

Now that they were getting on with it, Becca felt like she could focus on the real reason she was in that room. She tried to get comfortable, settling back against the cushions. She hated the chairs he’d chosen for his office but did what she could to get that thought out of her mind.

“Very minor things. Like, I recognized a favorite wine. I remember trying it for the first time and I remember where I was and that I was with someone, and I know it was Steve, but I don’t remember him being there. It’s just frustrating, for both of us.”

“Of course it is.”

Steve held his tongue. He didn’t like Dr. Sanderson’s patronizing tone. He saw the flash in her eyes and knew she heard it, too. She did what she could to ignore it.

“I mean, I remember my favorite meal that Steve cooks, but I don’t remember him cooking it. I remember decorating my office at home, and all of the choices I had to make, but I don’t remember us buying the house. And he’s not the only one in my life. I mean, he’s the best out of everyone. How do I explain this?” Steve watched as she stood and paced. It was as if her body needed to be active in order for her mind to come up with what she needed to say. “It’s like, I have this life, and I’m remembering it, and I know someone’s a part of it, and I can feel it in my bones that he’s the one who is a part of it, and I remember things that we did together and that someone was there. I just don’t remember Steve.”

Becca retook her seat, reaching out for Steve’s hand. He wasn’t sure if she was looking for reassurance or trying to reassure him as they both squeezed the other’s hand.

“I’m at least getting flashes of our life together, even if he’s not in them. I have zero recollection of my dad, or mom. None of my friends.” She wanted to confirm something with Steve. “Baby, all of my friends are from work, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Okay, so Doctor, my friends are from work, I met Steve because of work, did my father have something to do with my work? I mean, like a serious connection to it” She knew this but had decided to play dumb.

“Yes.”

“So, this memory loss has to stem from work.” She again turned to Steve. “I had to have done something for some government agency if I have a security clearance, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Steve, you really shouldn’t be volunteering information. This could prove harmful.”

Steve wasn’t sure what was going on in Becca’s head since she was hiding as much as she could while in this office, but something in her appeared to have just snapped.

“Okay, now, hold on here, bud. All he’s doing is confirming what I saw on the wall in my office.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve got citations and patents and pictures and articles all framed and hanging on my wall. I can read, I’m not illiterate. I just don’t have my damn memory and it all seems to be tied to my work. For what company do I work?”

“Now, that’s classified.”

“Is it? Because one of those articles on my wall seems to indicate that I quit whatever classified job it was that I had and started my own company. So, if I’m working for myself, how is that classified?”

“All I mean is that the work that you used to do is classified.”

“So that means the work I’m doing now isn’t? Well, then how about we have someone take me to my office, see if something in there jars my memory.”

“That would be a very bad idea.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid that’s classified.”

“Do I or do I not have clearance for the job that I had or have?”

“You do.”

“So, explain to me this: if I have clearance for my job, then how is it classified from me?”

“I can’t tell you, because-”

“Wait, let me guess… it’s classified.”

Becca got up from her chair once again and started pacing the room. Steve saw her mind at work and wondered what she was contemplating. It was several minutes before she spoke.

“This is completely unacceptable. Here’s how things are going to go from now on. I’m going to go home and my husband and I are going to talk about our life together.”

“Bec-“

“NO, Doctor! Do not interrupt me, just let me finish my damn thought.”

Steve huffed a laugh and both doctors look at him.

“I’m just happy that I’m hearing _my_ Becca.”

“Anyway, we won’t talk about my work. We won’t talk about how we met, since it seems we met because of work, except for anything I happen to remember.”

“Wait, do you remember something?” His whole demeanor changed as the doctor sat forward, eyes intent on Becca.

“I’m having very consistent dreams about how we met.”

“We should talk about those.”

“Now you’ve got me confused. You don’t want me to explore and try to remember, but now you want to talk about stuff that might be a memory and explore? Am I supposed to explore or not?”

“Well, Steve would need to leave.”

“No, actually he would have to be here. I don’t know the difference between dream and reality. He would need to be here to clear that up. And besides, I’m not dreaming about work. I’m dreaming about meeting my husband.”

“But you met him because of work.”

“You don’t want me to delve into anything, yet you want to talk about my dream. I’m not supposed to talk about work, yet absolutely everything seems to be tied back to it.”

“And that’s why Steve needs to leave.”

“I really don’t like it when people don’t listen to me. You’re not listening to me, Doctor. Why is that?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do I actually have to repeat the question?”

Steve saw that Becca was heading towards meltdown territory and that would most definitely not be good for anyone, especially her. He reached out and took her hand in his, paying close attention to see if she was aware of anything other than what was going on between her and Dr. Sanderson. When he saw she wasn’t, he addressed the doctor but didn’t dare take his eyes off Becca.

“Doctor, I recommend-”

The doctor interrupted him.

“Steve, you really need to keep your mouth shut.”

Steve knew he couldn’t stop what was about to happen, as much as he wanted to.

“Okay, that’s it. You do nothing but obfuscate the situation at every turn. You don’t want me to explore anything at all, yet the moment I let you know that I’ve had some consistent _dreams_ about my husband about the day we met you want to chat. You claim everything is classified, but, hello, I have the fucking clearance or I wouldn’t have the god damned job, or have had it since I’m not actually doing that work anymore. Why am I even here? This is a waste of time and money. Speaking of which, I have yet to receive a bill and I seriously doubt you are doing this out of the kindness of your heart. Who is paying for these sessions?”

She was met with silence.

“Let me guess. Classified?”

And the silence continued.

“I am going to demand an answer. Also, I want to know who has access to your notes on these sessions.”

That warranted a response, apparently.

“Now that is classified.”

“Really? Because I’ll bet you’re violating not only HIPAA, but also doctor patient confidentiality. And if you are, I’ll make sure you lose your license.”

Steve squeezed her hand, trying to get her to look at him and stop the stare down that was going on between them. He was unsuccessful.

“Becca, baby, he’s only trying to help.” He did what he could to hide his fear. She truly did not know what she was playing with.

“I don’t see it that way.”

She stood up.

“So, you know my plan. What you don’t seem to grasp, is that Steve is the _only_ person or thing or situation that I’m recovering any memories about. None of my memories have been him, exactly, but if he’s so intricately tied to my work, and I remember him, I bet I’ll start to remember my work and then I can go back to my life. I think our session is done for the day, don’t you?” She again waited for any kind of acknowledgement from the man and only when he gave his curt nod did she continue. “So, we’ll see you next week?”

* * *

They were quiet for most of the way home. Steve was afraid, though, of what Dr. Sanderson would do since she’d been provoking and taunting him.

“Becca, I think that was more than just a little dangerous. You know he wasn’t happy.”

“You know what? I really don’t care about him right now.”

Steve knew she wasn’t mad at him, but her clipped tone still ruffled his feathers.

“Becca! Jesus, think! If he thinks you’re defying him or you push too far, he’ll call your father and you’ll be carted out of here!”

She realized she hadn’t considered that and was quiet the rest of the way home. Right as they pulled into their driveway, though, a thought occurred to her.

“You said it sounded like I was back. That it sounded like I was starting to be me again.”

“Yeah. And?”

“Wouldn’t you think that would be a comfort to my father, knowing I’m coming back? Don’t you think he’d see it as a sign that things are improving?”

He didn’t want to answer that one in public so Steve waited until they were inside.

“I think you’re playing a very dangerous game.”

“This isn’t a fucking game! It’s my god damned life!”

“I thought this was _our_ life!” Steve knew he’d gone too far, but he couldn’t help himself. His frustration was off the scale. “You know, what’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine. And I know it’s not a fucking game! You know who else doesn’t think this is a game? Your father! You know he’ll use any excuse to get you out of here, away from me.”

Becca couldn’t’ hold herself up any longer and slumped to the floor with a thud. Steve closed his eyes, silently cursing his selfishness at just wanting his wife back. He opened his eyes and turned his attention to his wife, crouching down with her. He felt his panic rising when he saw just how violent the tremors sweeping her body were and knew he had to stay calm for her.

“Baby, I’m so sorry. I’m not mad at you. I’m just…” When she didn’t say anything right away he thought that maybe something else was the problem. “Bec, what’s wrong? What is it? Do you hurt somewhere? Are you in pain?” He stroked her head, wanting to wrap his arms around her but, not knowing what was going on, he didn’t dare for fear of making it worse. “Talk to me baby.”

It was hard for her to talk, but she had to get it out.

“You didn’t see his face.”

“Whose face? Was someone in here?” He started to look around, not for a moment having thought that someone might be in their house.

“No, Dr. Sanderson’s face, when he cut you off, basically told you to shut up. You were looking at me and didn’t see him. That’s the face that haunts my dreams.”

“I caught the tail end of it, he was quite stern.”

“It disappeared by the time you saw it. What I saw was rage.”

“That’s what you’ve seen in your dreams?”

He was trying to process that information, because it just didn’t make any sense, when she continued.

“Yes. That’s the only place I’ve seen it, that particular expression, the sneer to his lips, his cold eyes. I mean, he specifically would pull down his mask so I could see his face like that. He’s never shown me that look in session; he’s never had a reason to. I’ve never seen it before. It’s only been in my dreams. But I had to have, it was so specific. Was he in Italy?”

“No, baby, he was on the phone and Skype with the doctors.”

“This is making absolutely no sense. Okay, we’ve got to talk about this.”

He knew what she meant and he didn’t think it wise, at least, not at that moment.

“Becca, no.”

“FUCK! Steve, yes! Do you realize I’m getting no more than an hour of sleep a night now? This is the dream I have every time I go to sleep and I wake up terrified and wanting to scream because you are being tortured and murdered in front of me and I can’t do anything about it!”

“Becca, I’m here and not hurt. This never happened! It is just a dream.”

“God damn it! It is happening every single time I close my eyes and go to sleep! It has worked its way from only when I’m sleeping to when I’m awake. I hear your screams and they sound so fucking real!”

He saw she was getting worked up and needed to get her to calm down, be her rational self.

“Okay. Becca, okay. We’ll start to really talk about some things, this afternoon. Tonight. Before we do that, though, I want you to calm down. You need to relax. I know that’s going to be hard for you, but you are completely wound up.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Do you need me to help you relax?”

“Yes.” Her eyes were squeezed shut. Her jaw trembled like she was freezing.

“Go change. Get into something comfortable and meet me in the kitchen.”

He helped her to her feet and saw her up the stairs before he turned to head to the kitchen. He had everything ready to go before she should have been down to join him. He hadn’t heard her come back downstairs so he headed up to see what was going on.

He was glad he did.

She hadn’t even taken off her shoes or jacket before curling up on their bed, tears cascading across her nose and down her cheek. He hated to see her cry.

When he got onto the bed with her, she felt his warmth as he curled around her, flush against her back as his arms and legs encased her. Sound finally came out and she was sobbing and Steve held her. He realized he’d been a complete ass.

“I’m sorry-”

“No, this is my fault, Bec.” He couldn’t believe that with everything going on, she was still going to take responsibility. “I never should have said that, I never should have confronted you like that. I am just so frustrated right now and I snapped and I never should have snapped at you. This is not your fault. Yes, it’s affecting us. But baby, that’s because it’s affecting you and you’re hurting and I got selfish and I’m sorry. I will never forgive myself for causing you more pain.”

Becca tried to move but she was so wrapped up in Steve she couldn’t.

“I’m trying to turn over.”

He loosened his arms and legs. When she was finally facing him she let him envelop her once again, burrowing into his chest. His fingers trailed over her back, slowly moving along her spine. It took some time, but she was able to calm down and stop the tears.

“Steve, will you let me finish what I need to say, not try to stop me? And not argue with me?”

“If that’s what you need, you got it.”

“Okay. Here’s the thing. I’m sorry that I keep forgetting this isn’t just about me. I think this is because I don’t have any real memories of you and that makes it easy for me to forget. You haven’t caused any pain for me. I just want to get my memory back. I want us to start our family and get on with our lives. I want to remember you. I know you, but I don’t remember you. I’m tired of this, and the subterfuge, and just, everything. I really want to remember. Will you tell me stuff? Please?”

Steve thought about it, long and hard. Becca poked him a few times, trying to get him to respond. He wanted to argue with her, tell her she was wrong, but he knew that didn’t mean that he was right.

“Why don’t you change, get comfortable, and come join me in the kitchen.”

“Does that mean we’ll talk? You promised last night, and I kept up my end of the bargain.”

Steve knew he’d been backed into a corner, but it was what he really wanted to do, tell her about them, see if he could get her to remember them. He got up and headed to the door, turning as he got there.

“Just, join me, downstairs, okay?”

* * *

When she finally came downstairs he had to laugh. She was drowning in his sweats.

“What? You said get comfortable…”

“Got, you’re beautiful. Come here.”

Once in front of him, he rolled up the sleeves for her so she’d be able to use her hands without having to constantly shove the oversized sweatshirt up her arms.

“You are completely adorable, Dr. Liberty.” Their kiss was slow and tender.

“That’s Mrs. Liberty to you.”

Becca was pleased she could get Steve to smile as wide as he did. She glanced over at the counter and saw that he’d been busy. Steve had set her up to be able to fix ice cream the way she liked it. He had both the last of the coffee ice cream as well as the double dark chocolate gelato out and he had crushed potato chips both in her bowl and on a separate plate so she could sprinkle more on if she wanted.

“But, I haven’t had lunch.”

“After today, I think you should be able to eat whatever you want. Do you want me to fix some lunch for you?”

“No! No no. I’ll eat this, thank you very much.”

She dished two scoops of the chocolate ice cream and sprinkled extra broken potato chips over the top. Steve smiled as he put the ice cream back in the freezer.

“What’s that smile for?”

“I almost didn’t get the coffee out. I shouldn’t have, now it’ll crystalize a little.”

“Well, there are worse things.”

“Yeah, there are.”

He watched as his wife sat at their kitchen table and took her first bite, closing her eyes with a smile on her face. As was her habit, she let the first spoonful melt on her tongue before she crunched the chips, savoring the salty goodness. Her contented sigh allowed him to breathe a little easier.

“Is there a reason you won’t even try this?” It was the question she asked him all the time.

He didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure if this would be something she’d ask anyone, or just him. Was that her normal, or her Steve normal? He wondered how different she was with him versus everyone else. And now, with all her memory problems, he’d begun to wonder: was she different with everyone else? Was there a Becca for everyone else and then a Becca he had all to himself, his Becca, the person he was lucky enough to share his life with?

“Steve? Something wrong?”

“Just wondering.”

“What?”

“I don’t know how you are with anyone else. I don’t know if you ask me things or talk to me about things that you don’t talk to anyone else about. Your question, just now, ‘is there a reason you won’t even try this’, is that a question you’d ask anyone else, or just me? It’s the question you ask me almost every single time. But is it a question you’d ask anyone?”

She pondered his question.

“I don’t know. I seem to be pretty methodical, so maybe it’s an everyone question? The fact that I ask you every time? I think _that’s_ a Steve thing. Have you ever answered?”

“Every time you ask.”

“And your answer is…?”

“It just sounds disgusting.” When he caught her eye, he was expecting a smile. Instead, there was a seriousness about her.

“Are you going to talk about me? About us?”

“I think we need some boundaries.” He heard her exasperated sigh and hurried to his next thought. “The answer is ‘yes’ but I’m not going to talk about everything, at least, not yet. I know you don’t trust Dr. Sanderson and his methods, but baby, if he’s anywhere close to being right, I want to do this carefully.”

“So, you will talk to me?”

“Yes.”

As Becca got up and rinsed out her half-eaten bowl, Steve knew he should have expected her reaction.

“I don’t want to do this in the kitchen.”

“You got it. Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“I think this conversation calls for your third favorite place in our house.”

“Wait, what’s my first?”

“Our bed.”

“And my second?”

“My chair, in the living room.”

She agreed with those, but couldn’t figure out what her third was.

“And my third?”

“The leather couch in my office.”

“But I’ve never been in your office.”

“You actually spend a lot of time in there with me. You prefer my office to yours.”

“But my office is great!”

“Mine’s better.”

“What does it have that mine doesn’t?”

“Me.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter ahead...

“You did not just-”

“What?”

“’Me’? Are you kidding me with that answer?”

“Hey, that’s the answer you give me every time I ask.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

Steve’s chest got bigger and he had that cock-sure grin that he sometimes got. He was being completely adorable and Becca couldn’t help ribbing him.

“That doesn’t sound like something I would say. Are you sure? Or are you trying to rewrite our history?”

Her heart sank as she saw him deflate, and it sank even further when she heard the hurt she’d caused him.

“I would never do that to you, Becca.”

“Oh, Steve, I know. I’m just trying to be funny.”

“Well, you are adorable when you try,” he conceded.

“Are you saying I’m not funny?”

“I’m saying, I’m saying you’re adorable when you try.”

That was when she realized he was playing with her. She fought the smile begging to emerge as she crossed her arms in front of her, trying for indignant and failing miserably. Steve’s guffaw made her lose her battle.

“God, you’re gorgeous. Come on.”

When she took his hand he led her to his office. She’d passed by this door several times a day and had never really paid attention to it, which Becca thought odd. Maybe it was her memory, deep in her subconscious, knowing she wasn’t allowed in there without him. When they approached the door, she realized there wasn’t a traditional lock, but what appeared to be a large hunk of metal attached to the door. Steve slid the top half up and put his thumb on the panel hidden within and the lock disengaged.

“That’s pretty fancy there, babe.”

He chuckled as he stepped to the side to let Becca in. The automatic lights flickered as the subdued lighting turned on and she glanced around the room, taking it all in.

The first thing she noticed about the cozy room was that there was carpeting. The rest of the house was either wood or tile, so the carpeting stood out. As she let her eyes wander, she realized that every wall was completely covered or used, either by dark bookcases or closet doors. His leather-topped desk, at one end of the room, was facing the center. It wasn’t up against the wall and he didn’t have a lovely view of their backyard, as he should have. That’s when Becca realized there were no windows.

“No windows?”

“Nope. The contractor who came out and filled it in thought I was nuts. I built out this room myself, before we moved in. People can’t listen in to what goes on in here, it’s secure.”

Something else hit Becca as he finished his statement.

“It’s really quiet in here, unless you’re talking.”

“Yeah, no ambient noise.”

What he said finally sunk in. “Wait, people can’t listen in, so no sound gets out?”

“Nope.”

“None at all? Like even if I started yelling?”

“Even your yelling doesn’t get out of this room.”

A thought crossed her mind that had her tingling.

“So, I could get really loud in here, couldn’t I?”

Steve slid his arms around his wife’s waist, palming her tummy as he bent to her ear.

“And you absolutely have.”

His soft lips teased the shell of her ear, her jaw, and her neck. Her eyes fluttered as she struggled, not wanting to respond too quickly.

“Have I?”

“You could say I have been known to encourage it.”

“I don’t remember. Maybe we need to test that out, see if it sparks a memory. What do you think?”

“Is that what you want?”

His fingers traveled from the hollow of Becca’s throat up to her chin, taking hold and tilting her head away from him. He tugged the oversized sweatshirt as far as he could. He wanted her skin. His open-mouthed kisses started warm at her shoulder and ended hot at her ear. Becca couldn’t help but melt into him.

“Do you want to postpone our conversation?”

Becca groaned. She didn’t want Steve to stop. He knew just what her body wanted, what she craved. She savored what he was doing before shoving aside her desire to scream to her heart’s content.

“I don’t want to postpone our conversation. But we need to come back to this when we’re done.”

Steve wasn’t ready for their conversation until he kissed Becca, scrambling her senses as he sealed his lips to hers. His tongue, spilling into her mouth, had her twisting to clutch at him and just as she was ready to wind her arms around him, he stopped.

“Why don’t you get comfy?” Becca’s gaze slowly moved down Steve’s arm to his hand and his lethal fingers indicating the couch at the other end of the room. It was a match to the leather club chair in the living room so she knew it would be comfortable.

Steve grabbed the pitcher of filtered water from his refrigerator under his desk and poured them both a glass. When he sat on the sofa next to Becca, she tried to snuggle into his arms and he held her off. He almost gave in and bit her pouty lip. Almost.

“As much as I love holding you, I need to watch your face as I tell you this stuff. Some of it’s pretty disturbing.”

“What do you mean? How disturbing?”

“Enough so that I want to make sure you’re okay. I’ve been trying to figure out how much detail to go into because, well, there’s a lot. I don’t know how much might be too much. There’s a lot, and it’ll be upsetting and I don’t want to upset you, but I also don’t want to hide anything from you, either. But, there’s a lot.”

“So, I’m sensing that there’s a lot?”

She knew he was in his business mode when he didn’t crack a smile. She started to wonder if this was a good idea.

“Yeah, baby. There is. It’s complicated and I know you. You’re gonna have a million questions and we’ll get off on tangents. This’ll probably take more than one conversation, but not because you can’t handle it. I don’t know if you know this or not, but you have mental stamina that I’ve never seen in anyone else. I guess you have to for the kind of stuff you do. You are going to want to keep on going and my brain is going to be mush or I’m going to be on overload so when I say I need a break, I need a break, okay?”

“I take it we’ve run into this problem before?”

He chuckled and shook his head, only slightly, before answering. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“I promise to be as patient as I’m able to be. I’m just happy to be learning about me, well, about us.”

Steve paused before starting the story to give his wife a gentle kiss. He was pretty sure this was going to end up being a tough conversation that would have one of them, if not both, yelling, or stomping out of the room.

“So, you had just left your contract job, started your own company, and were going to attend a conference in a couple of months. You know that the conference was in Ugiristan. Your father received word of a credible threat against you.”

“Threat? What kind of threat?”

Steve turned and tucked one leg under him so he could face Becca. He already didn’t like the strain he heard in her voice. She turned and faced him, crossing her legs. He reached out and grabbed her hands, his gaze so intense that she hunched over, making herself small. She didn’t know what was coming, but she knew it was not going to be pleasant to hear.

“If any of this gets to be too much, let me know, okay?”

He didn’t like that she was slow to answer.

“Okay.”

It was the point of no return. Steve didn’t want to relive this conversation with her, but he had no choice.

“There was a bounty on your head.”

In the moment it took for those words to sink in, Becca sat up, ramrod straight.

“What the hell did I do?”

“I don’t know what you did. I just know they wanted you. Alive”

“At least they didn’t want to kill me. Do you know who it was?”

Steve kept his cool. He knew there were things far worse than death.

“We knew of _at least_ two groups. One out of the Middle East and one from North Korea. There were other possibilities. China, for one, but that was never confirmed to our satisfaction. And there was talk of a group not tied to any country, but that wasn’t confirmed either.” Becca had broken eye contact and was avoiding him, causing him concern. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No, no. It’s just, not every day you learn there’s a bounty on your head. I’m assuming it had to do with my work and now I wonder what I did to warrant that.” Becca wasn’t sure if she wanted to know what she’d done. Ignorance might be bliss. She took a deep breath and tried to calm her racing heart. “Please continue.”

“Your father talked to you, tried to get you to reconsider going but I think the argument you had when you left your job was still fresh in your mind.”

“We had an argument when I left?”

“Yeah, you could say that. You told me that he threatened you to try to get you to come back.”

“He threatened me?”

“You never told me the details, so I don’t know exactly what he said. Although, given what he’s done recently, I believe you now.”

“What, you didn’t believe me before?”

“You guys had a strained relationship so I thought maybe you were blowing it out of proportion. I know now I was wrong.”

“Is this what you were alluding to before? This argument and our disagreement about my father?”

“I think it played a role, but no. There’s other stuff.”

“Will you tell me about that? I know you asked me to wait, but, well, I think I need to know what I’m up against, don’t you?”

Steve was betting that she’d keep asking and asking and asking, wanting to understand. He really wanted to avoid the conversation for as long as he could.

“How about we get through how we met first, okay?”

Becca screwed her mouth to the side, biting her cheek.

“This is what you meant by tangents, isn’t it?”

Nodding his head, he asked, “can we try to stick to one story at a time? I know that’s not necessarily how your mind works, Bec, but it’s how mine does.”

“Okay. I’ll do my best.”

“So, you had a conference you were going to be attending. I was hired to make sure nothing happened to you while you were at the conference. No one thought there was a threat while you were here in the States, but we didn’t want to chance it, either. It was a couple months before and I needed to get to know you, know your habits so I’d know what to expect when we were there. At the same time we’d be providing a low level of security here, too.”

“Wait, how did my father find you?”

“I knew him, when I was in the Marines.”

“Were you one of his special forces-whatever they’re called-kind of people?”

“You could say that. I’d left and started my own security company about six months before he contacted me. He told me about you, but…” He hadn’t meant to venture in that direction, but he knew she’d never let him leave something like that statement hanging. A man could dream, though.

“But?”

“Well, he made you sound, I don’t know, like a brat. He really didn’t like that you’d defied him and left your job.”

“So, you took the job anyway? Guarding, or really protecting, I guess, his bratty daughter? Why?”

“It was a job. At the time I respected him, and he was reaching out to someone he knew to protect his daughter, his only child. No matter what, you were his little girl and he wanted you safe, at least, that’s how I saw it. The fact that he trusted me, well, it meant something to me. The way he talked, it sounded like it should be easy, and that told me that it was going to be really tough.”

“Why tough?”

“I thought maybe because of how he’d described you. Or because of the threat. And I figured it was probably both.”

“How did he describe me?”

“Brilliant, entitled, stubborn, doesn’t listen to authority, stuff like that.”

“No wonder you thought I was a brat.”

He didn’t want to dwell on this part. He knew that if they did, he wouldn’t be able to get out of the conversation he was doing everything to avoid.

“Moving on, um, I followed you. I got to know your routine, it didn’t take much since it didn’t vary.”

“What, I do the same thing every day?”

“Yeah, you do. Later, after we met, I asked you about that. You said it makes it easier to think about the problems you’re trying to solve. You don’t have to waste brainpower on mundane stuff.”

“Makes sense. Doesn’t make me sound fun, though.”

“Becca, you are plenty of fun.”

“I think you’re required to say that, like there’s a law that you have to say that since you’re my husband.”

“Baby, you work hard, harder than anyone I know. But when you play, you play hard.”

“I wish I could remember her, the woman you know.”

“Me, too.” He squeezed her hands, wanting to reassure her. “So, um, we followed you for several weeks. Things were the same every day. You left your condo at the same time, always with your coffee and lunch. You came home at the same time every day. You’d change and go work out, come home, eat dinner. You sometimes worked, sometimes watched TV, sometimes you read. You were pretty much this person day in and day out.”

Steve hesitated before he continued.

“But then there was one night that you went out. I got a call from the guy who was following you and I met him where you ended up.”

“Where did I go?”

“It was a free clinic. You volunteer there a couple times a month.”

“Really?”

He was glad to see a slight smile emerge. He knew it wouldn’t last.

“Yeah. It was the first time that I suspected your dad was probably at least partly wrong about you. You’re not someone who thinks she’s entitled at all.”

“Do I still volunteer there?”

“Yeah. I called them when we got home. All I told them was that you got sick on our trip and it would be a while before you could work, but that you’d contact them when you started to feel better.”

“Now I feel awful.”

“Don’t. You’ve made a huge difference there.”

“I have?”

“Yeah. That night, I watched through the windows as you took in patient after patient. I’m pretty sure most of them were undocumented. The clinic’s out in the central valley and it looked like they seek out the undocumented workers, to try to get them the medical attention they need. The lack of paperwork was a dead giveaway. If your dad knew he’d flip. You helped so many of them. But there was this one little girl who was so sick. You couldn’t help her and it tore your heart out. You held it together until you got home. You started crying in the car once you were home, but you really started bawling once you got inside. It hurt to hear you in that much pain.”

“I must have been loud if you could hear me.”

“We used directional mics so we knew what you were up to. We never recorded anything. We just wanted to make sure that we knew what was up or if anyone tried to contact you.”

“I don’t know how I feel about that, to be honest.”

“Well, it’s part of my job. I made sure we were as respectable as we could be.”

Becca decided to let that part go, for now.

“Then what?”

“About a month before the conference you suddenly left your place with a suitcase and headed to the airport, going somewhere. I had to scramble and was just able to make it onto the plane. You headed to Hawaii for a vacation.”

“You didn’t know I was going on vacation?” Steve didn’t answer because he knew what was coming. “Hold on, just a minute. You followed me on my vacation?”

“Yeah, with the threat I had to, we couldn’t take any chances, even with you in Hawaii. We didn’t know because we weren’t looking into you. You weren’t suspected of anything. If you had been, we would have known. Anyway, I barely made it onto the plane and then had to figure out which hotel and get a room. We’ve got some good men working for us so I was able to get the room right next door to you.”

“You did what?”

“It would have been way too easy for someone to take you off the island, onto a waiting boat. We would have never seen you again.”

Becca tried to pull her hands out of his as her eyes got big and then narrowed.

“The threat was that serious?”

“Worse. Do you need me to stop?”

“Um, are you telling me anything that I don’t already know, assuming I get my memory back?”

“Okay, first, you are going to get your memory back. You have to. And yeah, none of this is new. You already know everything I’m telling you.”

“Okay, then go ahead.”

“I can stop anytime, just say the word.”

“I think I’d rather get through everything in one shot than drag it out.”

“If you’re sure…”

“Yeah, positive.”

“Okay, so I was in the room next door. I followed you on your vacation. It was kinda hard, though. You didn’t have a schedule you followed like you do at home.”

“That’s odd.”

“No, I mean, we talked about it once we’d met and you knew everything and what you said made sense. When you’re working, your brain is always trying to solve a problem. On vacation, you try not to think. You talked about it like this: your brain is a chalkboard and you’re constantly writing and rewriting and erasing stuff and writing over and correcting stuff and it all gets really crowded and chalky and it becomes hard to read what you are writing. Your vacations are the time that you wash the chalkboard clean so you can start from scratch with a clean slate.”

“Okay, now that’s funny.”

“Yeah, I chuckled the first time you said that.”

“So then I can be funny.”

“You’re funnier when you don’t try.”

Becca stuck her tongue out at Steve, crinkling her nose.

Steve had to pause. He didn’t often see this side of her in their home. When she was working or trying to solve a problem, she wasn’t all that playful. But when she was relaxed, this was the Becca he knew. Not that he didn’t want her to be successful or solve problems, whatever they were, because not to do so would have been a waste of the most brilliant mind he’d ever known. He simply wished he had this Becca around a bit more often.

“Anyway, we didn’t know if someone was going to try to snatch you so I had to follow you everywhere. And you were a completely different person on vacation. Day in, day out you had been, you are, so serious, like you had the weight of the world on your shoulders. But, the week you were in Hawaii? Like I said, you had no routine. You got up whenever you wanted, you went exploring some days, feel asleep on the beach on others. You were getting hit on left and right, men and women. You ignored them all.”

“Did you ask me about that, why I ignored everyone?”

“Yeah, you said you didn’t understand flirting so you never saw it. And even for those you talked to, you said you always could tell, you knew within minutes that nothing would come of it so, in your words, why bother which was, well, let’s face it, good for me. But I couldn’t figure you out. You were so free that week. It was like you didn’t have a care in the world. I only knew I wanted to get to know you. You were not who I had expected. You were clearly not the person your dad had described. I contacted Koz, my partner, and told him I was going to be point on your case from then on.”

“You hadn’t been?”

“No, I was mostly backup once we had your schedule down. It was the luck of the draw that had me on the plane to Hawaii. I had distanced myself from your case. I’d believed the Admiral about you, even with your volunteer work, and I really didn’t want to spend more time than I had to before Ugiristan. After the clinic, I was having second thoughts and after your vacation I knew your dad didn’t know you at all, other than you’re brilliant.”

“What happened on my vacation to change your mind about me?”

“I was pretty sure I was getting a glimpse of the real you. And when you got back, you seemed to be a bit more at peace. You told me later that that was the first vacation you’d had in about five years.”

“That’s not good.”

“No. Now I won’t let you go for two months without having at least a long weekend out of the house.”

“Well aren’t you good to me.”

“I like to think so. Anyway, three weeks later we were in Ugiristan. Things were tense, but you had no idea. There were rumors swirling around the conference that you were on the verge of a real breakthrough and everyone wanted to talk to you.”

“Okay, hold on. If I’d been on contract and working on something requiring a clearance, how did they know about me?”

“I thought you read all the articles on you.”

Becca looked like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

“That was a bluff. I’d only read the certificates on the wall and half of one article. I found it creepy reading about myself.”

“That’s odd, since you can’t lie worth a damn.”

That made her pause.

“Who knows why I was able to do it. Maybe I was just too angry? Maybe I had enough information? Maybe I knew deep down, in whatever part of my brain is locked away right now, that I was right?”

He regarded her with a newfound appreciation. Also, he knew he would always need to keep this little fact in mind in the future.

“Okay, well, that contract wasn’t your first job. You’d been this up-and-comer who’d go to all the conferences so you could chat about the latest and greatest and then you took that contract and had that for several years. From what I gathered you couldn’t conference and you were sorely missed. You’re normally a quiet, fairly reserved person and you became this animated, passionate woman talking to everyone about what they were doing. You told everyone that you weren’t ready to talk about what you’d discovered until you had proof so you were there to cheer on your colleagues and learn from them. You wanted those in attendance and those who were announcing things to get the attention they were due. It was selfless and inspiring and I, well, I…”

“You, what, Steve?”

“I knew I was falling in love with you.”

“But we hadn’t met, you didn’t know me.”

“I was falling in love with the woman I’d come to know, and I’d only scratched the surface. I meant it when I told you that I don’t know why you chose me, I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but I am absolutely grateful.”

Becca would have been supremely happy if she could have said those three little words to Steve.

“Anyway, there were rumors that a mercenary, later we found out it was Jon McNichol, was in the area and had put together a team and that he was going to kidnap you and get you out of the country. He paid the rebels to bomb the conference so he’d have the cover he needed to kidnap you and hope you’d be declared dead in the aftermath so no one would ever look for you. Unfortunately for him, I was there. Again, I had the room next to yours and when the bombs went off, I suspected you were the target. We got you out of there and out of the country.”

Becca waited for him to continue and when he didn’t she started to get frustrated.

“You just, what, got me out?”

“You want the details, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“I should have known you would.” He’d decided earlier that, if pressed, he’d speak quickly, but not so fast she would be asking him to slow down. Maybe, just maybe he could get through this with a minimum amount of damage. Maybe.

“Okay, anyway… I got you out of the hotel. You hadn’t wanted to follow me, but the Admiral had given me a code that the two of you had for emergencies, the one that would let you know I was trusted, that I was sent by him, that I was safe. Once I used it, you followed me, had no trouble letting me take the lead. So, we got out of the hotel and were on the streets. They were out looking for you, the mercs and the rebels. They knew you’d made it out of the hotel when they couldn’t find you. The rebels had decided to go full-on revolution so they continued to bomb, and bomb everything. The streets were a shambles, and not just around the hotel. They took out parliament, and a bunch of other government buildings. It looked like it was a war. I mean, sure, it was a war, but Jon started it, over you.”

Becca got up off the couch and started pacing. She was trying to make sense of what she was being told and as she was listening to him she realized it was matching up-

Steve could see the panic in her eyes, he could feel it in her body, in how she moved when she whipped around and then collapsed to her knees in front of him. He didn’t want her to have to go through this again.

“Did we have to hide?”

“Several times, yeah.”

He watched as the color drained from her face.

“Bec, we should stop here.”

“No! I need to know! Did I… I mean, was I forced to…”

“Baby, please, stop.”

“Tell me!”

He was pretty sure he knew what she was asking, and it wasn’t a memory, per se.

“Your dream?”

There was no sound as, this time, she mouthed the words “tell me”. Steve would have done absolutely anything if he could just spare her this. He smoothed the hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear, and caressed her head. He needed to provide whatever comfort he could.

“I hate that you have to go through this again. Yeah, baby, you did.”

He knew how she’d react and he knew how much she needed him. She tried to get up, get away and he wouldn’t let her, his hand gentle yet firm on her shoulder. She struggled against him.

“Let me go! I need to get out of here!”

“I need you to listen to me, can you do that?”

“I don’t know how much more I can handle.”

He chucked her under the chin and she reluctantly glanced up at him while tilting her head down even further. He wanted to unfurrow her brow and put some color back in her cheeks.

“Rebecca Liberty, you are the strongest person I know. We can slow down, or stop, and I can tell you the rest of this story some other time, but I need you to listen to me first.”

He was pleased that she relaxed as she seemed to finally exhale, having waited for the other shoe to drop, and realizing that it had.

“Go on, I can handle it.”

Steve was pretty sure he was hearing the six-year-old who had lost her mother and his heart broke. He needed _his_ Becca back, and pronto.

“You need to remember that they went to great lengths to get to you. Whoever wanted you was okay with the methods used which means that they would have stopped at nothing to get what’s inside your head. They would have tortured you. They would have done whatever it took. You didn’t know it, but you were fighting for your life. No, they wouldn’t have killed you; they would have done far worse.”

“But he didn’t deserve-”

“Stop right there. He was part of the team that was paid to kidnap you and take you to, somewhere, God only knows where. He knew how valuable you were.”

“Who knew?”

“They _all_ knew, Becca. The whole team knew. Jon offered a million Euros to whoever brought you to him.”

“Jesus!”

“I keep forgetting that you don’t know some of this. Honey, rumor had it that the contract on you was somewhere over 20 million.”

“For me!?!”

“Yeah, baby, for you.”

“What the hell did I do?”

He could only shrug.

“Jesus, that kind of threat doesn’t just go away, does it?”

“Typically, no, but Jon went way too far. Starting a revolution was not seen in a favorable light by anybody. No country wants its sovereignty to be manipulated and tested like that. It’s my understanding that the word was put out: you’re not to be touched.”

“What he did was just…”

“Well, he wanted the money. Ugiristan was on the verge of a civil war already, he just pushed it and made it happen.”

“Are you sure the threat’s gone?”

“Positive.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Well, there was nothing official, but through back channels word got out. No one will put up with that.”

“But-”

“Becca.”

“What?”

“I know you don’t remember this and I know this is scary, but I know what I’m talking about. When I say that threat is gone, it’s gone. The groups were contacted, through unofficial channels, and it was made clear to them that you were off limits.”

“But-”

“Becca, stop.”

“You’re sure?” Steve nodded, looking her square in the eye. “You’re positive?” He nodded again. “Who contacted them?”

“You don’t need to know who they are. I know them. They are people, groups really, that you don’t want to know anything about. Trust me, only an idiot would try anything. Wherever you ended up, they’d be dealt with. Swiftly.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“But, how swiftly? I mean, how could they find me so quickly?”

“I’d be the one to find you.”

“Okay, but the question still remains: how would _you_ find me quickly?”

“You’ve been LoJacked.”

“I’m sorry, I’ve been what?”

“You had a device surgically implanted. I’ll always be able to find you.”

She didn’t know if she should be flattered or outraged.

“You did what to me?”

“No, no baby. You did it. You told me you did it for me. I think it was more for you, though.”

“Why?”

“Once we started dating and we got serious, I was, um, a little overprotective.”

“A _little_ overprotective? If I consented to do something like that…”

“Fine, you called me a wet blanket.”

Her snort was unexpected.

“Why did I do that?”

“It could have been because of me driving you to work, installing new locks on your doors, an alarm system in your condo that I could monitor, you know, things like that.”

“Are you serious?”

“I told you, I’d fallen in love with the woman I’d come to know before we met. One kiss, and I knew we were going to be married. Yeah, I denied it to myself, but I knew, deep down I knew, and I had to protect you. It’s my job to protect you.”

Becca’s heart was in her throat.

“This is just, well, it’s hard to believe that there’s no threat whatsoever.”

“Look, it’s not that there’s no threat. Every once in a while we hear chatter, but we just get the word out as quickly as we can. And, you help allay my fears when that happens.”

“What do I do?”

“You check in more often. You let me know where you’ll be, if your plans change, that kind of stuff.”

“That works for you?”

“Yeah, for the most part. We have our own code. If we ever start a text with the other’s name it lets them know that things are not alright, or if we’re forced to call each other, we use our formal names, you’re to call me Steven, I’d call you Rebecca. If you do that, I’m to turn on the tracker immediately and come get you. If I do it, you’re to contact your father and head to the police. We figured that most likely, I’m being asked to have you meet me somewhere and you’re not to do it, under any circumstance.”

“Have we ever needed to use this?”

“No, we haven’t.”

Dots were being connected; things were finally making sense to her.

“Was that why you got so upset when you couldn’t get in touch with me?”

“Yeah. I panicked. I almost went for the tracker, but I didn’t. I don’t know how long I would have held off.”

“So, it wasn’t how you knew I wasn’t telling the truth? When I saw the other doctor?”

“No. Baby, you just can’t lie worth a damn.”

She pondered that comment as she got up and sat back down on the couch, feet pulled up and hugging her knees to her chest.

“Steve, you really should have told me about this when we got home.”

“And you would have wanted an explanation and I couldn’t have given you one without the story and I wasn’t allowed.”

“Something seems so wrong with that, don’t you think?”

Steve didn’t answer her. He didn’t want to fuel her hatred of Dr. Sanderson, and he didn’t want her speculating. He didn’t need her going off on a tangent.

The problem was, when he didn’t answer her, her brain seized on the quiet and wrapped back around to the most pressing issue.

“So, I killed a man.” Steve put his arm around her shoulders and let her process that. There wasn’t much more that could be said, but he was prepared to repeat himself if she needed it. She’d been through it all when it happened and had dealt with the trauma better than expected. She appeared to be handling it like a champ again. He got lost in his thoughts until Becca moved, breaking his reverie. He sat up straight when she straddled him.

“When exactly did you get shot?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Your scar,” Becca gestured to his waist before laying her hand on him. “You said you were shot the day we met. When did it happen?”

“Even with no memory you don’t miss a thing, do you?”

“No, so, out with it.”

“Demanding little thing, aren’t you?”

“Yes, now stop stalling and tell me.”

He scrubbed his hand over his face before he started. He really wanted to be done with this conversation.

“We were on our way to the rendezvous and came across another merc and he recognized you and took a shot. The gunfire attracted attention and we had to hide until they left the area. It took a little time, but we got out. I didn’t let on that I’d been wounded until we were on the chopper. The admiral cleared the way for us so we made it to Turkey where I got patched up. They tried to get you home but you wouldn’t leave me. We got to Germany where we caught a flight home. You kept trying to get me to answer all your questions but I wouldn’t. We got you home and scheduled some time and when we met, I filled you in. That’s it.”

“That sounds a little too easy. What really happened?”

“I swear, that’s what happened. It did take several conversations but you learned everything.”

“How many conversations?”

“Three, or four. You kicked me out of your place. I was persistent, though. We talked some more and you kicked me out again.”

“What caused that, me kicking you out?”

“You were pretty pissed at the Admiral and I was a convenient target. You thought I should have come to you before everything went down.”

The look on her face told him that her opinion hadn’t changed.

“Well, you should have.”

“No, I shouldn’t have. You weren’t paying my fee, you weren’t listening to the Admiral, you weren’t even taking his calls, you would not have done what he wanted you to do, nor would you have done what I needed you to do. You would have gone off halfcocked and who knows what you would’ve done.”

“You would have wanted me not to go.”

He did not need her to be defiant. He really didn’t want to have to deal with that. He wondered, if he shut down her argument, like he knew he could, would she be pissed?

“Sure, that’s the first preference, but I knew you wouldn’t go for that. No, you would have gone but you would have been looking over your shoulder and eyeing everyone suspiciously and you would have let them know that we were on to them and that would have screwed everything up.”

Becca hated how right he was.

“You know me way too well.”

“Yeah, I do. I know you better than anyone.”

He thought knew how it was for her, hearing what had happened without having gone through it. It sounded scary. It was scary. All in all, he was impressed with how well she was handling herself.

He was surprised when he felt her relax. He pulled her flush to him. They embraced and even clung to each other as she took in all that she heard, thought about it; processed it.

“Steve, I’d like to go over some of it again. I feel like you glossed over a bit.”

“I can’t.”

He heard her gear up again. He knew she was tenacious, but this was unbearable.

“Come on, we’ve come this far.”

“Becca, no. I can’t, not because of Dr. Sanderson. I just, I _can’t_.”

He wasn’t looking at her and she didn’t like what she heard. She tilted his head back so she could look at him. She needed to know-

“What’s wrong?”

There were times that she drove him completely insane with her need to understand, to know _why_. He’d learned early in their relationship it was simply easier and less painful to give in and tell her. It was also faster.

“I came too close to losing you, a couple of times. I can’t relive that, not now.”

“But it was so long ago.”

“No, Becca, it was a little over a month ago. I almost lost you. I came so close to losing you.”

“Oh, Steve…”

He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, burying his face in the crook of her neck.

Becca, for the umpteenth time, felt ashamed of how selfish she’d been. She wanted to apologize, but she waited. She knew he’d just dismiss her apology and she didn’t want that. Steve had been so forgiving and kind and patient, incredibly patient, and she knew she needed to do right by him.

“What can I do for you? You need something, what do you need?”

He sat back, avoiding her gaze. He couldn’t let her see his pain.

“I need something that you can’t give me right now, so I’m not going to even ask for it.

“Please? Maybe I can and you just don’t know.”

His wry grin was belied by his tone. She heard him try to mask his pain. It didn’t work.

“If you could, you already would have.”

“God damn it, stop hiding shit from me!”

She couldn’t help her explosion. She was sick of it, of all the hiding and manipulation. Steve hadn’t done any of it, but he was convenient.

“Fine, you want to know!”

“Yes!”

“I want to know if you’ll ever love me again, if you’ll ever be able to tell me that you love me, that you love our life and want to spend the rest of yours with me.”

As Becca opened her mouth, Steve clamped his hand over it.

“No. I can’t have you tell me just to tell me. I need to know that you really love me.”

She took his hand away.

“I know I do.”

“But you don’t feel it. I can see it in your eyes. You don’t look at me like you would if you felt it, felt the love. That’s what’s killing me.”

He tried to move her off his lap but she wouldn’t budge; she clung tight to him.

“Bec, I need up, I need out.”

“NO! You are not going anywhere. You wouldn’t let me earlier and I’m not letting you now. I don’t think I could handle it right now if you left me. I absolutely cannot do this without you.”

“Is that what…? Baby, no. I just want to clear my head is all. I could never leave you.”

“I need you _right now_. Stay, please? I promise, no more talking about this, not today. I’ll wait until you’re ready again, okay? I can’t be alone, not after this. Please stay.”

Desperation was not a good scent on his Becca. He wrapped her up in his arms before he moved, laying on the sofa, taking her with him.

“Whatever you need, Becca. Anything for my girl."


	9. Chapter 9

Becca almost, almost tried to get more information out of Steve. In fact, when they were fixing dinner she started to ask. It was too tempting to her not to. She needed to understand what had happened to see if she could piece together if it had any bearing on what was happening to her presently.

She knew she was frustrating Steve to no end. She knew he was having a hard time, reliving what had happened to her. She thought about trying to get more information about their time in Ugiristan, but he was adamant about needing a break from that conversation. Instead, she asked about Italy and what happened there.

Steve was not a happy man.

“Becca, I told you earlier that I’d need for you to leave me be when things got to be overwhelming. Why can’t you stop?” He’d stopped cutting the red peppers and turned to face her.

Becca felt bad, but she’d become a woman obsessed.

“I… I really want to understand. I need to know.”

“I get that you need to know. Why can’t you see what this is doing to me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I need you to understand something, will you at least try?”

She bristled at his tone and almost, almost said something. She decided not to.

“Sure.”

“Every time we talk about anything having to do with you losing your memory, or that we missed our vacation in Italy, or anytime I say something and I’m hoping for something familiar, something that would let me know you’re regaining your memories and when I don’t get that, I just lose all… Bec, it… it feels like it was yesterday. I close my eyes, hell, I don’t even have to close my eyes, and I see you, completely covered in blood and unconscious and stuck in our car in Italy. I couldn’t get to you, I couldn’t get you out. I couldn’t protect you, keep you safe. I failed you.”

“How could you have been the one to fail me when some random driver hit us?”

“I promised you I’d always keep you safe and I didn’t.”

“Steve, that’s ludicrous. You can’t control everyone else in the world. That’s completely unrealistic.”

“But you were with me. You were two feet away from me and I couldn’t protect you.”

“Wait. Hold on. Do you think this is your fault? Do you think you’re responsible for my memory problems?”

“If I’d been-”

“Don’t! Don’t you dare try to take responsibility for something that you couldn’t have seen coming, that you couldn’t do anything about! Jesus Christ, this is just like that time I got a flat tire in the worst storm we’d seen in years. Like it’s your fault that I didn’t get my tires rotated! Come on! You’re not Superman, are you?”

When Becca whipped around at the end of that tirade, all she could see was Steve. He grabbed her shoulders and crouched down, searching her face, all at once desperate and hopeful.

“What the hell, Steve? Let go of me!”

“Becca!”

“What!”

Steve’s face softened. Becca wondered why he wasn’t angry or upset anymore. She cocked her head, staring intently, when it dawned on her.

“Oh my god!”

“Yeah?”

“I remember being so angry with you.”

“What do you remember? Tell me everything.”

Steve had to let her go when she started to move, pacing about the room. She ended up walking circles around the island, gesturing, sometimes wildly, and stopping periodically when she mentioned something important, which was everything.

“Well, we’d only been seeing each other for, what, a little over a month. I got off the freeway in Danville. Traffic was just awful, like it normally is when it rains. I was on Danville, just past Livorna when I got the flat. It was dark, not late late, but with the black clouds it was dark, and pouring down rain and I tried to change the tire, but I just wasn’t strong enough to loosen the lug nuts. I grabbed my phone out of the car, still trying to loosen one, hell, I would’ve been happy with just one, when I finally got through to a towing service and they told me it would be at least an hour and a half. Then I called you and you came down and changed my tire but you were angry, no, no; you were pissed. When we finally got home, you exploded. The veins in your neck were standing out. And, um, I accused you of thinking you were Superman then, too. That was when I realized how scared you were, for me, for my safety. I don’t think I ever told you, but it was after that argument, that was when I decided to call Mitch, oh my god, I remember his name, and I call him Mitch, I don’t call him Admiral or Dad and it pisses him off. Anyway, I tried to contact him about getting the tracking device implanted and you overheard a conversation I had and you told me not to trust anyone but you to make it happen, and I did, I trusted you.”

She’d come to a stop in front of him. They each reached for the other, grabbing whatever they could: the collar of her sweatshirt and the waist of his jeans and they pulled and they collided and they kissed. The desperation of the past weeks, for her to remember him, was swept away and replaced by the need to feel, to connect.

He searched her face and recognized his Becca. He couldn’t help but wonder: how much memory had she regained?

“Is that all you remember?”

She resumed her pacing. Steve hated that she needed to move to think.

“No, I remember that fight. It was when I accused you of being a wet blanket, of trying to be Superman that you let loose. At the end of it all, you called me elitist. I called you a troglodyte, and then started laughing because I’d just proved your point. I’d never seen anyone as angry as you were in that moment. You turned, I think you were going to leave. I told you I couldn’t understand why you were so angry when I’d just proved your point. You turned back around and took one look at me laughing at myself and your whole demeanor changed. You told me that you loved me, and I couldn’t believe it. This wonderful, kind, thoughtful, intelligent, funny, patient, gorgeous man was in love with me, I mean, why me? It just didn’t- oh!”

Becca hit her hip on the corner of the island as she barreled towards Steve, launching herself at him when she was close. Her momentum shoved them back, bumping into the sink as she locked her arms around his neck, all but cutting off his oxygen.

“Bec, what is it?”

He felt her shaking and started to get concerned when he heard her crying. He held her even tighter.

“Becca, come on, you’re scaring me, what’s wrong?”

“’Kay, we need to put bumpers on the counters for the kids, ‘cause that really hurt, but I don’t care about that right now. I love you, Steve.”

Steve finally heard what he’d been needing. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and they remained in that position while letting all the disappointments and hopes and difficulties of the past weeks melt away.

Becca remembered Steve, remembered being in love with him.

“Steve, I don’t ever want you to doubt that I love you. I am so sorry that I-”

“No!”

“What?”

“Don’t you dare apologize.” He loosened his grip, encouraging her to do the same so they could finally regard each other. As he sauntered out of the kitchen, Becca wrapped her legs about his waist as he continued. “Did you voluntarily lose your memory?”

Steve wiped at her drying tears, chasing any lingering sorrow away.

“Well, no.”

“This is not your fault.”

“Okay.”

He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear as he ascended the stairs to the second floor.

“I don’t think you believe me.”

Fresh tears pooled and spilled down her cheeks.

“It was my brain, my memories that were gone, driving a wedge between us.”

“And it was some random idiot Italian driver. And if you’re not going to let me feel responsible because I didn’t keep you safe, I’m not going to let you feel responsible because you lost your memories. You can let go now.”

Becca turned her head as Steve lowered her to the floor, realizing they were now in their bedroom.

“I thought you were hungry.”

“I don’t care about food. I want my wife.”

Becca whimpered as Steve backed her to the bed. She recognized that tone. She recognized him. She just wanted to stare at him. She wanted to touch him, to kiss him.

All she needed was to love him.

He needed more.

“How much do you remember, baby? Of me? Of us?”

“I don’t remember us meeting. That stuff in Ugiristan, nope.” She searched his face as she thought. “Actually, I’m not remembering anything from work, nothing about it at all.”

“Okay. Um, can you please concentrate on us?”

She closed her eyes and let the memories she searched for pop up into her consciousness.

“I remember our first date, and that I had to go back in to change because you were in that suit. God, that suit. Charcoal grey, with the blue button down, and that grey striped tie. You were incredibly handsome.”

“I want you to keep your eyes closed.”

Becca shivered. She wasn’t sure what he was up to, but she’d do anything for him.

“Oh, I remember our trip to Napa. Ooo, no, no no no, our first kiss.”

Steve had to clear his throat several times before he could even utter a word.

“Did you like that kiss?”

“Um, you could say that.”

“Tell me more.”

“You took control, of me, of the kiss. I mean, you didn’t take something I wasn’t willing to give, but the way you held me…” She was obviously reliving the memory, the way her head swayed from side to side, upturned as if in the act itself. She felt Steve tug the sweats down her hips and smiled her Cheshire cat grin when he groaned at finding her commando.

“Young lady, what did you have planned for tonight?”

Becca finally opened her eyes when she glanced down.

“I planned to seduce my husband.”

“Why on earth would you do that?”

“Because I wanted you.”

“Wanted? What, you don’t want me anymore?”

“No. Want isn’t even close. I need you.”

“Need?”

Becca whipped the sweatshirt off and reached behind her, unfastening her bra in record time. She got on the bed and beckoned her husband over.

“Need.”

Steve was already shucking his clothes off when he saw her finger motion him over. His pace picked up and he was soon crawling over her before lying next to her. He was overwhelmed, not knowing where to start. But knowing he needed to kiss her, caress her, feel her.

He played with her, toyed with her, silently pleaded with her. He needed a sign that she was back, that his Becca had been returned to him. He needed something familiar. “Roll over.”

When on her stomach, Steve circled an arm around her waist, lifting her hips, helping her to her knees as his other hand caressed her soft skin from her shoulders to the sweet curve of her ass. He settled on his heels, dragging the backs of his fingers up the sensitive skin of her thighs. He loved to watch her twitch and jump.

“Steve!”

“Becca, indulge me, please?”

Her back bowed and her knees moved, spread even wider.

“Touch me.”

He leaned over her, kissing his way up her spine as he continued to tease, dragging his fingertips along the outer edges of her labia as his other hand palmed her breast, massaging, teasing, pinching and rolling, he got harder as he heard her needy whimpering.

“What do you want?”

Becca pushed up onto her hands, supporting both of them and grabbed his, the one cupping her breast, and dragged it to her throat. She arched her head back as she plastered his hand to her, encouraging him to grab her.

Steve just about lost it when he recognized his Becca. She was back.

She reached back and grabbed a handful of his hair, pulling him so they were almost face to face.

“I am way past want. I need you inside me. Baby, please make love to me.”

They were both well past the point of trying to make it last; they needed the connection.

“Arch your back, just a little… Perfect.” His groan answered her high-pitched sigh as he sank into her, his chin on her shoulder for just a little extra bit of leverage. He didn’t know how long he’d-

“Steve, hold up, hold up.”

“What’s wrong? Am I hurting you?”

“No, not even. I needed you to know…” her sigh concerned him.

“What, baby? You can tell me.”

“I know. I… I just… I love you.”

“For crying out- are you trying to make me come?”

Becca got a case of the giggles, until Steve moved back, withdrew and slammed back into her. She found it hard to groan and giggle at the same time.

“Yeah, that’s what you really want, isn’t it?” He teased her, changed his tempo. A steady three-count on his way out and a steady four count on his way in.

“Steve, come on, you know what I like.” Her whining heated his blood.

“You told me you want me to make love to you.”

“You want me to say it, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“But Steve…”

“You don’t say it, I’m not going to do it.”

Becca knew he was as good as his word. She had no choice.

“Please fuck me. Hard”

He loved watching her lower lip, the way she’d bite it right before uttering ‘fuck’. It drove him crazy, hearing his well-educated wife beg him to fuck her. It got his blood pumping.

And his hips.

They were both too keyed up for this to be anything other than quick and dirty, no matter how much Steve wanted to draw it out, no matter how much Becca wanted to be pinned beneath him, begging for orgasm after orgasm.

One was all they could both handle. One grunt and one moan and one scream and one fuck! and one Steve and one release and one Becca and one release and one cuddle.

And two I love you’s.

* * *

They were playing with each other, touching and teasing, and grinning and smiling, and laughing and sighing, when something hit Becca.

“Steve?”

“Mmm?”

“I know you don’t want to hear it, but I have a bad feeling about Dr. Sanderson. He was so keen on getting me to talk about my work, I really don’t trust him.”

“I think our hands are kinda tied.”

“No, I know, but I think I don’t want to let on that I’m starting to regain my memory. About you and our life, I mean. He was wrong, about you telling me things and it screwing with my memory. I don’t want to give him a reason to delve into that part of me, you know?”

“I know.”

“I will say, hearing things from your perspective, it’s given me a new appreciation for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, um, like our engagement. You know, at the time I thought I’d somehow forced my way into your life because it was so spur of the moment. It’s… well it’s reassuring to hear that you knew, that you’d felt it too, us, so early.”

“Did you think you twisted my arm?”

“Yeah. Look, I know I can be, what was it Mitch called me, a force of nature? Wow. Wow…”

Becca shut her eyes, some memories coming to the surface as she went in search of them. How cold he’d been when he told her that her mom had died, how dismissive he’d been when he was late and had to stand in the back of the auditorium as she gave the commencement address at her high school graduation and left as soon as she was done, and the time he’d called her a force of nature, such an awful argument, and it had gone on and-

Her eyes flew open and she sat up, peering down at Steve who had more than an inkling of an idea as to what was going on in her head.

“It seems to me that you still think Mitch was right, at least a little bit.”

“Bec-”

“No. I’m doing the talking right now and you are going to listen to me. You are going to hear me.”

“Uh oh.”

She scooched closer to him, laying her hand on his chest, gently stroking and trying to reassure him.

“Yeah, uh oh’s right. I had no idea that what he said still bothered you. I thought we were past it. Steve, I did not settle, I did not scrape the bottom of the barrel, I am in no way wasting my life with you. You are so much better- hey, no, please look at me.”

He’d tried to turn away but she reached for his chin, encouraging him to turn back to her.

“You are so much better than I am. Don’t roll your eyes. I may have brains, but that’s all I’ve got. You have brains and love and compassion and you are so patient with me. You are going to make the absolute best dad. If Mitch had his way all I would ever do is work. I wouldn’t have a life of love and joy, a life I didn’t know was possible until I met you, and I never would have had if I hadn’t met you. My life is richer, far more rewarding, more complete, just, infinitely better with you in it.”

“Becca…”

“What, it’s true. Don’t you believe me?”

“That just seems a little over the top.”

“And ‘I love you with everything I am’ isn’t?”

He paused before he conceded. “I see your point.”

“I don’t know why you think that anything Mitch says is true for me.”

“He knows my weakness.”

“And that is…?”

“You.”

“Me? I’m your weakness?”

“I only want what’s best for you.”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“What?”

“You are the absolute best for me. I couldn’t even dream of doing better.”

“Come on.”

“Listen to me, very carefully. You’re a 4-point shot, a 4th down conversion, and a fucking grand slam all in one.” She saw the laughter in his eyes.

He saw the hopeful look on her face.

“You’re hoping you got that right, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I didn’t, though, did I?”

“It was good enough for me.”

* * *

A few hours later, Becca and Steve had finally had a quick bite and fell back into bed. Steve wanted to understand where her memories started and stopped; what the boundaries were.

They quickly established that work was still off the table. Becca remembered school, and she remembered Ben-definitely not the guy who was claiming to be him-but she didn’t remember any of the jobs she’d had. It was like they’d never existed.

Becca was having a hard time with remembering her dad when she was a grown-up, but they figured that was mostly due to how much of their time together involved something with her work. That one argument, about how Steve wasn’t good enough for her, was the rare exception: it’d had nothing to do with work. Well, that wasn’t quite accurate, but it was close enough.

The tough part, naturally, was Steve.

There were only a few times where their lives officially crossed because of her work. There were all the times, though, that her life was consumed by work, or so she expected, and because that’s what the majority of what was going on, she couldn’t remember him. Like most of their early dates or the weekend in Big Sur. She felt a little nuts. She couldn’t remember the drive down or most of the first day, not until they’d made love. That’s when everything came into sharp focus.

“What has got you blushing.”

“That was the first time that we, I mean that you…”

“Yes?”

“That you, tied me up.”

“Did you like that?”

“Why are you asking such a silly question. Of course I did.”

“Do you want that now?”

“No. I just want, I just want you. It feels like I’ve been on the longest trip, and that while I was gone that I forgot you, what you looked like, what you felt like, how you sounded, how you made me think, how you made me laugh, everything about you. That makes me so sad that I did that. I knew I loved you, I just couldn’t remember it and that drove me nuts. I just want you, only you.”

“You’ve got me. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Promise?”

“Of course. I’m yours, whether you want me or not.”

“Oh, I absolutely want.”

She could never hide anything from him. Her sigh was one of her tells.

“What, there’s something else, isn’t there?”

Becca nodded, knowing he was going to ask, wondering how he was going to take it.

“What?”

“Just hear me out, okay?”

Steve almost groaned. It was never good news when she said that.

“Okay.”

“I want us to put off trying for kids for a little while, like a couple of months. I haven’t fully remembered everything, and I’m sure that’ll happen soon. But what I really want is for us to be, I don’t know the right word, settled, maybe?”

“What do you mean?”

“The accident, and our trip, and it feels like I’m getting to fall in love with you all over again which, trust me, is even better the second time around. But at the same time it feels like old hat. No, no, that’s not right. There was this anticipation that we had right before our trip, the couple days before. But no, that’s not even right. We were, I don’t know, in a groove. I want to get back to that.”

“I get it, I do. Whatever you need, baby.”

“Anything? You’re not mad?”

“No, of course I’m not mad. Maybe a little disappointed, but not mad. I get it. I want us to be in a good place, too. So, whatever you want is good with me.”

* * *

It was a couple of days later that Becca was getting ready to head to her next appointment with Dr. Sanderson. While she wasn’t looking forward to it, she knew she was capable of handling herself with him. She let Steve know she wasn’t going to need him to go with her.

She had several errands to run and wondered how it was that she got everything done when she worked full time. She needed to remember to ask Steve that when she got home.

The parking lot for Dr. Sanderson’s building was full, so she parked on an adjacent street. She knew she was early, but if his patient before her hadn’t shown, then she might be able to get in and see him early, being able to get home to Steve that much sooner. She got out of her car and rounded the corner just in time to see Ben Braford exit the building, turning away from her and making his way to his car. She watched as he drove past her, ducking behind building signs so he wouldn’t see her.

She was paralyzed.

Should she head in to confront Dr. Sanderson? Should she run to the police? She checked the time and saw that she could head home to talk to Steve before her appointment. Maybe she could get him to call in for her, saying she’d gotten food poisoning or something, give them time to talk this latest development through.

She headed back home and almost called out for Steve when she heard him answer his ringing phone.

She headed towards the kitchen, intent on letting him know she was home.

“…Yeah, she’s out running errands and actually, she has her next appointment with the good doctor in about 20 minutes so I’ve got time. What’s up?”

She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t take the last few steps into the kitchen, opting to eavesdrop instead.

“I can’t do that to her. Not now.”

Becca couldn’t help but wonder who Steve was talking to.

“But-”

He was getting louder, the frustration coming through more and more.

“No! I am absolutely not going to do that to her. I am not leaving her. Not now. Not going to happen. We’re at a critical stage.”

Had they been having marital problems that he hadn’t told her about? Had he been thinking about leaving her because she couldn’t tell him that she loved him? But she remembered him. She didn’t understand why he had been thinking about leaving her. Becca started to panic.

“Yeah, I know I sound like a broken record, but I think she’s really close to getting her memory back and I need to be here for that.” Well, at least he was sticking to what they’d agreed to say. There was only a brief pause before he continued talking. “Yeah, I do. Some of the stuff could be hard. And we have no idea if she’s going to remember everything at once, or small chunks, or-”

She thought maybe she should go ahead and head into the kitchen. She wanted to straighten everything out with Steve, talk to him about Ben coming out of Dr. Sanderson’s building.

“Look, Ben…”

Becca eyes popped wide as her world came crashing down around her. Was he… was he really talking to Ben? First Dr. Sanderson, now her husband? What kind of rabbit hole had she fallen into?

Becca backed away from the door, being sure not to make a sound as she exited the house and drove away, not knowing where she was headed.

She just knew she had to get away from the man she’d thought she could trust.


	10. Chapter 10

Luckily it was the middle of the day so Becca did not have to contend with rush hour traffic, making very good time to she knew not where. The reservoir was too close; she needed distance. She didn’t know what she would do, what her next step was, who she could trust, and any of the thousand other things swarming her brain. She had to get away, find someplace quiet, someplace she could think, and try to figure out what the hell was going on. Her cabin in Big Sur! Perfect. It was far enough that, once rush hour hit, it would take anyone several hours to get there and she’d be able to come up with a plan, or better yet, try to understand just what the hell was going on! Plus, she was always able to relax there.

She knew she had a limited amount of time before-

Dr. Sanderson broke through her thoughts a little earlier than expected.

Becca didn’t think she could answer the phone without yelling and screaming at him, demanding to know what Ben Braford he is most definitely not Ben Braford was doing in his office.

The problem was, she didn’t have that luxury: if she started ducking his calls, he’d contact Steve and then who knew what he’d do, probably turn on her tracker. Then something hit her and she knew she might be able to get away with it.

“Hello?”

“Bec- Dr. Liberty, this is Dr. Sanderson.”

“Doctor, I’m so glad you called. I’m in my car and I couldn’t pull my phone out to dial you. I’m sorry, I was out shopping and let the time get away from me. I thought I might be just a few minutes late but there’s something happening on 680 and I don’t know how long it’ll take to clear up.”

“This is most inconvenient.”

“I agree. If your next patient comes in before I get there, please, see them. Do you have an opening later today?”

“Directly after my next patient.”

“Well, then, why don’t we switch.”

With any luck she’d be all the way to Big Sur before the doctor expected her, and she hoped she’d be down to Gilroy by the time Steve would start expecting her home.

“We can do that, but I expect you here, on time.”

“You do know that I don’t control traffic, right doctor?” She couldn’t help it. The man was a tool.

“Of course, but if you’d planned ahead-”

“If I planned ahead? Doctor, just-” Becca wondered if he was trying to make her angry. She took a deep breath and continued. “Why don’t we have the rest of this conversation when I see you. You wouldn’t want to distract me while I’m driving, would you?”

She was pretty sure she heard him grinding his teeth.

“Of course not.”

“We’ve taken care of everything, haven’t we?”

“Yes.”

“Then I will see you at the new time. Bye.” She didn’t like that there was almost no satisfaction from hanging up on that man while he was responding to her. She really wanted to be able to slam her phone down.

Becca felt her heart slow, somewhat, as she drove. She didn’t know if Big Sur was the right place to go, but it was far enough away that it would give her enough time when Steve started to become suspicious and look for her.

* * *

Becca wasn’t quite to Gilroy by the time she would have been out of her session with Dr. Sanderson. She took the next exit that had a gas station, figuring she could kill two birds with one stone. She kept the car running. She needed to make this believable. She took a couple of seconds to psyche herself up before she called Steve.

“Hey, so, I’m done with my session and still have errands to run. I’m picking up something for you so it’ll take a little time. It’ll probably be a couple more hours before I get home.”

“What else could you have to do? I thought you were trying to get everything done before seeing Dr. Sanderson.”

“It’s something for you. I’m headed to Palo Alto to pick something up. I should be back in a couple of hours.”

“No, Bec, you’re going to run into rush hour. It’ll be quite a while. Hey, this might actually work out.”

“Why’s that?” She didn’t know how she could sound so casual, given that she’d just found out he’d been working with Ben.

“Well, I’ve been wanting us to have a special night out, you know. So, stay in Palo Alto, I’ll come to you. We’ll go to dinner, get a hotel room, we’ll make a night of it. Come on, let’s do it.”

Becca thought about it for a moment and knew that anything other than the answer he wanted to hear would be grounds for him to start probing, and she didn’t know how much she could withstand before letting something slip.

“Well, I don’t have anything with me, will you pack a bag for me?”

“Sure, what do you need?”

“You know the toiletries I use, and the makeup. Why don’t you pick out the outfit you want me to wear. And don’t forget something for me to wear tomorrow.”

“I am going to do that. And you know what else I’m going to do?”

Kidnap me and hand me over to Ben? she thought.

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to choose your lingerie, too.”

If she could forget, for only a moment, that she’d caught him talking to Ben…

“Do me another favor? Choose a couple of sets, let me surprise you with what I wear, okay?”

“I like that. Let me get going so I can get packed up and down there before traffic’s really bad. I’ll see you soon, love you.”

“Love you, too,” came spilling out of Becca’s mouth before she realized what she’d said. She panicked and hung up the phone.

* * *

The rest of her trip down to Big Sur was uneventful and she made excellent time. She passed the turn out where Steve had proposed and thought about taking a detour, but didn’t. She stopped at the store before heading to her cabin. She wasn’t sure how long she’d be there and all they ever left there were canned foods and condiments.

When she got there she found it a bit musty inside, so she threw the doors and windows open to air out the place. She knew she’d have only a little time before they started looking for her, but, checking her watch, she knew it would take Steve at least two and a half hours once he knew she wasn’t in Palo Alto and figured out where she’d gone, Traffic was always horrendous. She hoped she had at least half an hour before anyone called.

She’d been so rushed, and then so focused on getting to her cabin as quickly as she could, that she hadn’t really thought about what she’d seen and heard today.

So, Ben was in cahoots with Dr. Sanderson.

She knew that he’d had information that he shouldn’t have had. It made her feel, simultaneously, both better and worse about Dr. Sanderson. She’d known something was up with him, but the big question was: how long? How long had the two been conspiring?

She couldn’t help but go over both conversations she’d had with Ben.

First, trying to make her think that he’d thought her dead, when, at the end of their first encounter he’d revealed that he’d known she was okay, had known she was in Italy. And his constant insistence that he was her husband. He had to have known about her amnesia; it was the only way that his claims would make any sense. If he didn’t know she was struggling, it would have been completely illogical. The question became: when did he know?

Worst case scenario had them in contact all the way back to Italy, or even before. But if that had happened, then Italy wasn’t an accident. What, were they trying to kill her?

Becca suddenly got very cold.

Why would someone want her dead?

She got up and started pacing, needing to warm back up. She also thought best that way, at least, when she was trying to figure things out.

There were easier ways to try to kill someone, unless they wanted it to look like an accident.

Or, had their intent been something else altogether? Was it still a possibility that there was a price on-

Her phone, all the way on the other side of the room, started ringing. It was Dr. Sanderson’s ringtone.

She tried, she really did, but since she’d started thinking about what might be going on, she couldn’t answer it. When the ringing finally stopped, she glanced down at her hands to see them trembling. She finally got that under control and reached for her phone, only to hear the notification of a new voicemail.

She couldn’t even listen to his voice.

When he called about 10 minutes later, she started pacing again, staring at the phone in her hand. She had to keep switching hands so she could dry her palms on her jeans.

There was no voicemail this time.

The third time the phone rang, it was Steve. Becca knew she had to answer it, but she had no idea what she was going to say.

“Hello.”

She heard his sigh before she heard his strained voice.

“Hi. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Do you mind telling me where you are?”

“I’d prefer not to.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said I’d prefer not to.”

“Why, have I done something?”

Becca couldn’t help her bark of laughter. “You could say that.”

“Could you do me a favor and clue me in?”

“Why?”

“Well, first of all, I don’t know what I did. And second, I was really kinda looking forward to a romantic evening with my wife. Whatever I did, I’m sorry and I want to fix it.”

“No.”

“’No’ what, you don’t want to tell me?”

“I need time.”

When the phone went dead, she thought maybe her phone had dropped the call, until she heard the front door open.

She ran screaming into the bedroom, making a mad dash for the bathroom _why the fuck didn’t I install locks on these doors?_ and slammed the door shut, leaning against it.

She knew it was Steve: she’d glanced as she ran and saw him. How the hell did he get here so quickly?

“Becca! Jesus, calm down, it’s just me. Come on out.”

“NO!”

“Becca, come on, it’s Steve.”

“I know who you are. How the hell did you get here so quickly?”

Softly, through the door, she heard-

“Becca, please come out.”

He was right on the other side of the door.

She knew she had only two choices: stay in the bathroom or open the door and face whatever he was going to do to her. She’d never felt so betrayed in her life.

“I’ll come out on one condition.”

“Name it. Anything.”

“Disarm yourself. Put all your weapons on the table in the kitchen and go sit on the couch.”

She’d been expecting him to rush the door and shove it open. Instead, silence.

His voice soft and somewhat muffled, Steve had stepped back from the door. “Are you afraid of me?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t hear anything. The silence was even more terrifying than hearing him. It was a few minutes before she heard Steve yelling to her.

“Okay, I’ve done as you asked. Please, Becca, come out. Talk to me.”

As quietly as she could she opened the door, wincing as she heard the hinges squeak. She braced herself, still expecting him to rush her, which didn’t happen. With each step out she was prepared to be confronted by him, or possibly even by Ben. She was terrified until she got to the kitchen and saw his guns and his knife on the table. Granted, he could have more, but she was pretty sure not. She paused and considered picking up one of the guns, and then thought better of that. She walked into the family room and gave him a wide berth.

Steve felt like he’d had the wind knocked out of him when he saw the look on her face. Becca was terrified. Of him.

“I have no idea what I’ve done to make you this scared of me.

“I heard you!”

“What could you have heard that made you terrified of me?”

“I heard you talking to Ben.”

“I talk to Ben every day, even the weekends.”

“You admit it?”

“Of course I- Fuck! Rebecca, no. Koz! You remember my business partner, Koz?”

“You’ve mentioned him, but I don’t remember him.”

“The Ben I was talking to? Benjamin Kozel. My business partner: Koz.”

“That’s awfully fucking convenient.”

“No, actually, no, it’s not. Not when you’re terrified of me. Do me a favor, pull out your phone and look up my company. Hell, just do a search on his name. He’s on the lecture circuit, he’s done enough seminars. You’ll see pictures of him, of the two of us. Hell, you’ll see some of the four of us, you and me and Ben and Pam, Pamela, his wife.

When she saw the pictures and the articles, she started to shake.

“I j- I j- I just just thought ‘cause you said ‘Ben’ and and, oh fuck.”

Steve caught her before she could fall to the ground; she was shaking so badly she couldn’t stand.

“I am so sorry. It never even dawned on me. Is this why you missed your appointment with Dr. Sanderson?”

“Yes! Well, not the only one, but yes! He came out of the building today, before my appointment.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Sanderson came out of his building, what-”

“No! No, no. Ben Braford. The guy pretending to be Ben Braford came out of Dr. Sanderson’s building.”

“The guy who’s approached you twice?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“That’s why I came home! That’s when I heard you talking to Ben. I thought he’d left the doctor’s office and then called you.”

“Oh, Becca, I’m so sorry.”

“You were telling him you didn’t want to leave me. Why, were you thinking of leaving me? Was it because I couldn’t remember you? I can remember you now.”

“No. No no no no no, baby. No. I’m not leaving you, not at all. Koz wanted me on a case that would’ve taken me down to LA for a couple of nights. No way am I leaving you until you get all your memory back. And leaving then only for work. I will never leave you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. No wonder you got spooked and ran. Wait, let me put Koz on this. Let’s see if we can get to the bottom of what’s going on. I’m going to call hi- no, I’m going to FaceTime, so you can see who I’m talking to.”

“I don’t need that.”

“No, yeah you do. Let me just do this.”

Steve got Koz on the phone and they chatted for a bit. Becca and he were introduced and she didn’t want to tell Steve, but she breathed a little easier seeing Koz.

Steve told him only some of what was going on, but enough that Koz was concerned. He started to do some discrete checking on the good doctor and promised to get back in touch when he had some news.

When he got off the phone, Steve glanced up, expecting to find Becca pacing the floor behind the couch, but she wasn’t around. As much as he wanted to go after her, he hung back. He knew she was beating herself up over what she’d done and tried to put himself in her shoes.

He heard a cupboard open and close and the tap turn on before he rounded the corner only to find her leaning against the counter with her eyes closed. He knew she was trying to get herself under control: this was something he’d frequently seen her do, especially when dealing with her father. He knew she always calmed when he held her, but he also knew this had to do with him.

“Hey, Bec?”

“Yeah?”

“You okay?”

“I, oh Jesus, Steve, I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am.”

“Well, it would have been better if you’d just asked, but I get why you didn’t think you could.”

“Don’t let me off the hook like that. I mean come on, I should have trusted you! After what you did for me in Ugiristan, I should never, ever have cause to think you’d be working behind my back with anyone else.”

“How much do you remember about that?”

“Ugiristan?”

She finally opened her eyes and he simply nodded.

“Technically nothing. I know only what you’ve told me.”

“Just, hear me out. I’m going to play devil’s advocate, okay?”

She hated that he thought it was his job to excuse her behavior.

“’Kay.”

He grabbed some water and settled next to her. He held out his hand and she resisted at first, but finally relented and put her hand in his.

“So, I didn’t do this, but what if I’d exaggerated everything I told you, made it sound like I’d done more? You don’t know. Did you live it? Yes. Do you remember it? No.”

“But-”

Steve squeezed her hand cutting off her interruption.

“Nope, not done. Did you have a shocking experience and then come home to confide in me, talk to me when you were probably feeling your most vulnerable, someone you know is messing with your head and now we know he’s somehow connected to your therapist, and did you hear something else that shocked you? Yeah, you did. You didn’t have context for the call I was on. First, I didn’t know you were home. Second, you know Koz, or, you will when you remember everything. I only call him Ben when I’m angry with him, which is really rare. And, honey, it just never dawned on me. I’m sorry, forgive me?”

“I’m the one who screws up and you’re the one apologizing to me? What planet are you from?”

“My official home world is ‘My Parents Raised Me Right’. I think they did a pretty good job.”

“Of course they did. Oh Steve, can you apologize to your mom for me?”

“Why?”

“Well, we’ve missed a couple of brunches with them since we got back from Italy.”

“Please tell me you’re not going to start beating yourself up over that, are you?”

Becca took a long pause before answering him.

“No.”

“I’m not convinced by that.”

“Hey, I have a question. How the hell did you get down here so quickly?”

Steve was impressed by her ability to deflect.

“Oh, that.”

Becca did not like the sound of his response. She pushed herself off the counter and pivoted to stand in front of him, the hand he wasn’t holding balled on her hip.

“Yeah, that.”

“So, I completely forgot I had this thing on. You probably think I turned on your-”

“Yeah!”

“No. I didn’t. Your car and your phone, though, yeah. It’s not like I was tracking you. Well, it was but, okay. Here it is. After the whole you lied to me thing, and I was worried, I activated them but didn’t have it tell me where you were, just notify me when you were outside of a 30 mile radius from our home. I forgot to turn it off, but I’m probably not going to now.”

“Just a minute-”

“Becca, damn it! You just said that you saw Ben coming out of Dr. Sanderson’s office. We don’t know what the hell he’s up to! I just got you back and I’ll be damned if I lose you again.”

“I’m not going anywhere!”

When Steve’s eyebrows threatened to meet his hairline, she rethought that statement.

“Yeah, okay, technically I went somewhere.”

Steve couldn’t help but speak through a bit of nervous laughter, desperately trying to keep the anger out of his voice.

“Technically? You’re two and a half hours from our home. Technically, you told me you had your session today. Technically, you told me you were on your way to Palo Alto. Technically, you weren’t going to tell me what was going on, or where you were.”

Becca felt worse and worse the longer he went on. She couldn’t look at him. She wanted to curl up in a ball. What she really wanted was for all of her problems to just magically disappear.

“I can’t protect you if I don’t know where you are.”

“I really don’t deserve you. You are being entirely too kind to me.”

Steve tugged on Becca’s hand to get her to take the couple of steps that were separating them. She tucked herself into him, hoping he would wrap her up in his arms. She was able to exhale some of the tension when he did, and was able to slowly release it the longer they stood together.

“So, Bec, do you want to try to head back tonight, or stay here?”

“Can we stay here? Maybe even for a couple of days? We’ve got all of our stuff here.”

“As if you think I’m going to let you wear clothes.”

“Before we make it our own private nudist colony, we should go to the store.”

“That, and Dr. Sanderson’s expecting a call from me.”

“You know, about Dr. Sanderson…”


	11. Chapter 11

Steve called Dr. Sanderson once Becca was out of the room, telling him that her car had some trouble and he’d found her on the side of the road, no battery left on her cell phone. When the doctor started to berate him for his wife’s behavior, Steve cut him off. He wouldn’t put up with what he was saying.

He took a few minutes after hanging up the phone, giving Becca her space. He knew she was having a hard time with everything, not knowing who she could trust and not being in charge of her life. That was not his Becca. No, his Becca was strong, independent, fiercely loyal, and one of the most loving and caring people he’d ever met. She was the one who was always in charge, in control, who knew exactly what was coming and how to handle it. This woman, the one who could be scared of him: she was unknown to him. He didn’t know how to deal with her, what to say or what to do.

He glanced at the table in the kitchen, noting that all of the weapons he normally carried on him were there, lined up nice and neat for her to see. She’d been terrified of him, so terrified that she ran from him, not once but twice. When he realized that her screams were not because of someone entering their cabin, but because he entered their cabin, he felt ill. He’d wanted to rage against whatever had caused his wife’s amnesia, but he knew it wasn’t a person. Well, it was. It was that damned driver who’d run into their car in Italy, but it wasn’t like he’d done this on purpose.

He headed to the back porch. Becca loved sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs on the porch, feet propped up, and looking out into the forest behind their cabin, either that or the hammock just off to the side. Hearing only nature was one way she’d clear her head. It was one of two ways that would work when they didn’t have time for a longer vacation.

His hand on the screen door, Steve paused. He remembered the last time they’d come up to the cabin. It had been for Thanksgiving. The air was crisp and made for an invigorating, brisk hike each morning. They’d come up for the whole week and it was the day before Thanksgiving that Becca had told him she was ready to start a family. It had easily been the happiest day of his life. It was something she’d told him at the beginning of their relationship that she wasn’t sure she’d ever want, only to find out it was what she’d wanted most of all but had always figured she’d never find the right man who would ‘put up with her’, something he hated hearing her say.

They’d had a good week, talking and being excited about their future. They talked about things they wanted to teach their children, what kind of people they wanted them to be. They’d walked and hiked and talked and laughed and made love.

Becca had been the most relaxed Steve had ever seen her. She was at peace with any demons she had about her dad and how he’d treated her after her mom’s accident. Becca was even happier that she’d started her own company, knowing she’d be able to spend as much or as little time at work as she’d want to. It was up to her. She talked about putting in daycare at work and hiring the best staff she could find, having all the children of staff there. She’d started to wonder aloud if they could find enough space for a school to be built on their grounds. She was genuinely excited and looking forward to their future.

Steve knew it was a mistake to have taken her to Italy. He should never have taken her out of the country.

He blamed himself for her memory loss. If he hadn’t taken her to the one place she’d always wanted to go, they never would have been driving on that road, they’d never have been at that crossroads, they’d never have been hit by that truck.

They’d probably be expecting their first child if he hadn’t taken her.

The night before the accident, that was when she told him she’d gone off her birth control. They were strolling along the Arno after dinner and she pulled him aside and it took everything he had not to pick her up and carry her back to their hotel. She told him it was highly unlikely that she’d get pregnant right away, but he could hope; he could dream.

And then the next day: the accident.

Steve opened the creaky screen door in an effort to banish that memory. He was surprised to find Becca sitting on the top step, her elbows on her knees and her chin propped up on her hands, and quietly approached his wife. He sat next to her, his knees popping as he hunkered down.

“I’m sorry, Steve. I am so sorry. I can’t-”

“No, baby, stop. Come on, stop.”

Steve pulled her onto his lap.

“Not gonna lie, it does hurt knowing you don’t trust me. But I know once you have all your memories you will. And they’re coming back to you. You will get everything back and we will live our lives and everything will be good.”

Steve tightened his grip as Becca tried to move.

“I am not letting you up.”

“I’m just trying to get more comfortable.”

She faced him, legs about his waist, arms about his neck.

“I need you to let me speak and not interrupt me.”

With his single head nod, her dam broke wide.

“I’m sorry that I can’t remember everything. I’m sorry I didn’t remember you for so long, for not remembering us. I’m sorry for this craziness that I’m putting you through. I’m sorry for doubting you. I’m just… I’m sorry.”

When she was done, she hugged him. She buried her face in the crook of his neck and breathed as he squeezed her tight. Neither of them moved as they sat, breathing each other in, feeling the stress and the strain of not just the day, but of everything since their time in Italy try to fall away. Several minutes passed before Steve loosened his grip and Becca wouldn’t have it.

“I’m not ready to let go yet. Steve, I’m sorry-”

He hugged her tighter, stopping her words.

“Bec, stop beating yourself up. I know you’re sorry. I know that if you had a choice, this never would have happened. I don’t blame you. We’ll get past this. You’ll get your memory back, we’ll start our family, and life will go back to normal. You’ll see.”

* * *

Becca and Steve headed to the grocery, wanting enough food for at least a couple of days since they didn’t know how long they’d be at the cabin. With everything that Becca had seen and experienced over the past few hours, they wanted time to think and talk, to see if they could put two and two together and come up with the whole story. Plus, Steve wanted to give Koz some time to dig up what he could on Dr. Sanderson.

Chicken and steaks and salmon and charcoal and potatoes and all kinds of fresh produce and dairy products from the local farmers’ market, and they were ready to hole up for at least a week, if need be. Becca was quiet during their outing; so quiet, in fact, that Steve grew concerned. Did she believe him, that he wasn’t involved with whatever it was that was going on? He hoped so. He wanted to believe that his word was good enough for her, but he wasn’t sure.

The silence was deafening as they put everything away. Becca was desperate to make heads or tails of everything and she kept coming up empty.

Who was after or, maybe more importantly, why were they after her? What was in her head that they were so desperate for?

Steve shooed her out, telling her to get comfortable, dinner would be at least an hour, so Becca headed outside, grabbing a blanket along the way, to her favorite spot: the hammock Steve had put together for her just off their back porch. She wrapped herself up and plopped into it, swinging to and fro, looking up into the trees and watching the sky and the light change from yellows and oranges to pinks and reds of the sunset as it played out above her head.

While her body was at peace, her mind was racing. Absentmindedly, she reached for the pendant around her neck, playing with it as she tried to make heads or tails of everything.

Why had she lost her memory? Why, when she woke from the accident, had she not remembered anyone? Steve was so important to her, why hadn’t she been able to remember him?

She turned her mind away from that, away from the old questions that had haunted her ever since she got home from Italy. Why concentrate on the old when there were new questions to ponder…

What was she working on that would have caused people to want to make people think she was dead, kidnap her, cart her off to who knew where?

And then, who was Dr. Sanderson working for? Was it Ben Braford, or, the man who claimed to be Ben Braford? And who was he, this man who claimed to be an old beau of hers? Why did he keep trying to convince her he was her husband when he wasn’t? It felt like her father played into this somehow, especially since he’d been threatening her husband. Was he the one? Was he the one Dr. Sanderson was working for, or was the not-so-good doctor working for someone else?

Was the accident in Italy really an accident? A different thought came to the forefront that she quickly dismissed, because the implications were entirely too dire. What had they done to her in Italy that caused her to lose her memories?

She heard Steve through cracked-open window in the kitchen, getting everything ready for the grill. She was sure he felt the weight of the world on his shoulders, just like she felt the weight of the world on hers.

To and fro and to and fro she swung, the patterns of the leaves changing overhead as the wind blew. The colors beyond the leaves changing as the sun made her trek across the sky: Becca used these seemingly random acts of nature to clear her mind of all the chaff, all the craziness that she’d been experiencing in her life for the past many weeks. Hell, had it really almost been two months since they left for Italy?

She opened her mind and let the colors and shapes play out, distracting her. She actively focused on not thinking. She was so focused that she missed Steve coming outside, lighting the grill, and checking on her. She didn’t hear him head back inside. She no longer heard him through the window as he cleaned up or came back out and put the food on the grill. It wasn’t until the smell of the salmon and potatoes and artichokes grilling wafted over her that anything other than the early evening hues and still discernible shapes above her registered. Her stomach jumped at the smell as she realized she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, more than nine hours ago.

A soft smile gave way to a yawn as she glanced about, noting the lantern and knowing he’d been looking out for her. At her side was Steve, slouched comfortably in one of their Adirondack chairs, a tumbler with a couple of fingers of, no doubt Noah’s Mill, sitting on the armrest. She glanced at his face assuming he’d be lost in thought staring at the wilderness behind their cabin, but was surprised: he was looking at her. He gently shook his head and shushed her when she opened her mouth to speak, instead sitting up and leaning over the hammock, thumbing her lips as he gazed into her eyes.

“I hope you know how much I love you.”

She didn’t know how he did it, but his kiss was both slow and passionate. Becca hated that it was cut short by the timer.

“Give me about five minutes and dinner will be on the table, waiting for you.”

He gave her one last quick kiss before hoisting himself out of his chair. She watched as he placed a foil pouch on the rack before deftly pulling everything from the grill, balancing it all on the carving board as he closed off everything so no errant sparks or coals could get out and cause havoc. She watched as he took the stairs two at a time and opened the creaky screen door before he turned to her.

“Five minutes.”

Steve disappeared into the house and it was maybe 30 seconds before she heard plates and silverware being taken from the cupboard and drawers and then being placed onto the dining table. She wondered if the food was going to remain on the carving board or if he was going to serve everything up. There was only one way to find out.

Becca had been counting, thinking that she was right on target for the five-minute bell when she stepped inside and was pleased to see she was right. Steve had already lit the candles and was standing at her chair. Becca folded the throw she’d been wrapped in and entered right as he pulled her chair out to help her sit.

She drizzled olive oil over her baked potato and artichoke before dousing her salmon and artichoke with lemon, topping everything off with a generous helping of sea salt and fresh ground pepper. She didn’t talk as she ate, savoring the flavors and letting her stomach dictate her actions. A bite of salmon and one of potato before she headed for her favorite, tearing off the outer leaves of the artichoke, smearing the ends on the plate where the olive oil and lemon juice had pooled before scraping the pulp from the leaf with her bottom teeth.

“I was waiting to see how long it would take you to go for that.”

“Mmm, did you have a bet with yourself?”

“Yep, I lost.”

Becca wiped at the olive oil she felt dribbling down her chin and couldn’t help laughing.

“Whadja lose?”

Steve sat back with his wine and watched as his wife ate. He stayed quiet as she pulled the leaves, laying them out so they could cool enough for her to eat, before picking them up one by one and going through her ritual. He loved that she had a ritual for just about everything that she loved.

When she glanced at Steve, the hand holding the leaf about three inches from her face stopped.

“You’re not eating?”

“You know I love watching you eat.”

It exploded. The familiarity of their situation, of what he just said, of everything that had been running through her head in the past hour was swirling around, faster and faster and faster-

“Everything okay, Bec?”

-as all the pieces came into crystal clear focus. Becca’s world came to a sudden and screeching halt. She quickly rose, her chair crashing to the floor as she dropped everything in her hands on the table. She was trembling, her eyes darting about, and her mouth, her lips were moving rapidly, as if she were speaking a mile a minute. She shut her eyes, doing everything she could to concentrate on what was going on in her head.

“Bec, what’s wrong?”

“Shhh!” Her eyes squeezed tight and her hand out in front of her, as if to ward off anything that would interfere as she kept mouthing words. Suddenly, her eyes popped open and settled on Steve, but more looking through him than at him.

“You love watching me eat! He was there.”

“Who was where?”

“The truck driver, the one who hit us.”

“Where?”

“He was at that Trattoria where we had dinner, the night before the accident. Trattoria Gigi.”

“That’s not possible.”

“He was there. He looked at us a couple of times during dinner. I remember him.”

“Why would you remember him?”

“He had this birthmark, on his face.” She gestured to her face, just below her eye. “It looked like a mushroom. I saw him, just before he hit us. He was looking right at me. I saw that birthmark when he was right on top of us, as he steered into us. Steve, there’s no way; that was no accident, it couldn’t have been. And if it wasn’t an accident, then everything else that’s happened since isn’t an accident either. None of it.”


	12. Chapter 12

Steve thought about what Becca had just said, but there wasn’t any possible way she was right. That would mean manipulation at the highest levels and that just couldn’t be the case, could it? “Everything’s part of it? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense, Steve. It’s so clear, why can’t you see it?”

He let her dig at him sink in. Her unspoken words were practically hanging in the air over her head, with arrows pointed in his direction: are you too stupid to see it?

In the couple of years he’d known her, she rarely had a need to be like this with him, defiant and completely sure of herself. He’d seen it plenty with others, but rarely with him. In fact, this was something Becca hadn’t done since Italy…

Steve let what she’d said sink in: the driver that hit them had been at the restaurant where they had dinner the night before. Could a coincidence that big really-

“Wait!”

Becca jumped and cried out at Steve’s shout before she calmed down enough to form words.

“So you believe me?”

“That’s not the only thing you remember, is it?”

“What else is there to remember? Do you not get how important th-”

“No! Becca, seriously! Do you remember anything else from the trip?”

When she realized what he was saying, that she’d remembered something new, she realized that she’d glossed over the most important part of what had just happened, that she remembered at least a part of their trip, she sank to the floor right where she stood.

“I was so caught up, oh Steve, oh m- that was the night I told you…”

Steve dropped to the floor with Becca and pulled her onto his lap. She wrapped her legs around him and held on for dear life.

“It’s okay baby, it’s okay. The important thing is that you’re alive, and you’re here. And you’re safe. I won’t let anything happen to you.” Steve was surprised when he heard sniffles. He’d assumed that his Becca would be back when her memories came back, and his Becca didn’t cry.

“What’s wrong?”

It was several minutes before she spoke. He knew he had to give her some time with whatever was going on in her head.

“I wanted to come back pregnant from the trip. I wanted that to be my anniversary gift to you.”

He briefly squeezed her, and she returned the gesture.

“Becca, baby, we have time for kids.” When he loosened his grip, she did too. He needed to see her. “The important thing is you are okay, and that’s by far the best anniversary gift you could ever give me.” Steve rocked her a little as they talked. “You’re getting more of your memory back. What else do you remember from our trip?”

“The accident was what, day two? There wasn’t much to the trip.”

“True, but do you remember anything else?”

She leaned back and wiped her face.

“Our hotel room was nice. Actually it was really nice. It was beautiful. Everything up to that was uneventful.”

She finally glanced up at Steve and saw that he was beaming.

“Everything up to that? Do you remember the morning of our trip?”

“You hired a car for us.”

“Do you remember before that?”

“You woke me. We made love that morning and you brought me breakfast in bed and I told you I was going to demand that kind of service every morning on our trip and you said gladly, and then you gave me-” her hands shot to her throat, finding the alexandrite pendant he’d given her for their anniversary.

“What else do you remember about the trip?”

“The awful flight to New York but then the great flight to Rome, and landing and the car ride and our first night… I remember all of it.”

“What else do you remember?”

“From the trip?”

“Anything.”

Becca closed her eyes, searching her memories

“I remember… I remember…” She twisted and grabbed his hand from her waist, her thumb stroking the inside of his wrist, mimicking what he’d done to her in the car when they got back from Italy. “I remember when I first saw you, but it wasn’t that morning when everything exploded. It was two days before that.”

“You saw me before he tried to snatch you? I thought I’d stayed in the shadows.”

“You weren’t front and center, but I sure noticed you.”

“Really? You never told me that, that you noticed me before.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Well, that day you wouldn’t let me say anything, and then you got shot-oh my God, you got shot!”

“I’m okay.”

It took Becca a moment for that memory to sink in. Instinctively, she reached for his scar, needing to feel him, to know he was okay. “There was everything that went along with that. Then I was mad at you, and by the time we went out on our first date I knew I could never tell you.”

“So why are you telling me now?”

“I don’t know, well, probably because you told me you knew when we first kissed that we’d get married. You never told me that.”

Steve knew he’d been caught and couldn’t stop his sheepish grin. He shook his head in agreement. “Do you have all your memories?”

“Why don’t you ask me stuff, see what I know.”

“Where did I take you on our second date?”

“That was the picnic at the reservoir.”

Steve’s secret grin, the one that he only ever showed to Becca, the one where he’d bite his tongue as he smiled, like he had a secret he was just dying to tell, came out. “Do you remember our third date?”

It was Becca’s answering smile, the one that only ever happened because of his, when she’d bite her whole lower lip and grin, made Steve think his wife just might be home. “Are you referring to what we ended up doing or the date I’d planned?”

That she knew even to ask that made Steve hopeful. He couldn’t help his grin. “Either one.”

“I remember both. I think you planned what happened.”

“How could I plan you jumping me?”

“You wore that Henley, the one that almost matches your eyes. You knew what you were doing.”

“You remember what I wore?”

She took his face in her hands, her touch gentle. “I remember everything.”

“What else do you remember about that date?”

“That wasn’t a date.”

He was relieved to hear her take her familiar stance on the oldest of their ongoing arguments they had.

“What was it if it wasn’t a date?”

“It was our first time.”

“What do you remember?”

“You showing up an hour early. Why’d you do that? You never told me why.”

“You caught me. Okay, confession time. I was eager and I wanted to talk to you.”

“Yeah?”

“You were trying to hide it, but I could tell you were still having a hard time with me.”

“You knew?”

“I got to know you pretty well, I had to, before Ugiristan.”

“What were you gonna do?”

“Talk. I’d been hoping we could go for a walk before dinner, talk everything through, but…”

“But what?”

“You answered the door.”

“All it took was me answering the door?”

“It was the way you answered it.”

“Remind me?”

“You were in that purple robe, the short one?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Listen to you, you knew what you were doing.”

“Yeah, I was almost in the shower when my doorbell rang. I covered myself up.”

“But you answered the door like that.”

“It would have been worse if I’d been naked.”

“True. I had to kiss you; I was tongue tied.”

“You’ve never been tongue tied around me.”

“I’m going to tell you a secret. I’m tongue tied every time you walk into a room.”

“That’s not true.”

“I’ve learned to cover it up.”

“Then you’re not really tongue tied.”

“I am. Next time, just ask me a question, any question, anything.”

“Why did you get tongue tied?”

“You were, you are stunningly beautiful and wicked smart and I have no idea why you fell in love with me.”

“You make it easy to love you. You’re kind and intelligent and patient and gentle and at the same time you call me on my shit. You stand up to others for me, you protect me. Why wouldn’t I love you?”

“I distract you from your work.”

It hurt. Steve’s comment hurt Becca. Her mouth opened several times as she started to speak. Why did he insist on parroting that ass?

“Don’t even begin to tell me you agree with Mitch.”

Steve knew he’d gone too far. He no longer had her lack of memory to fall back on. His continued silence betrayed his own feelings.

Becca couldn’t understand why Steve deferred to Mitch’s take on things. She needed to nip this in the bud, once and for all. She knew she had to be careful, though. She had a tendency to want to swat away anything that had to do with Mitch, and she couldn’t inadvertently take out Steve in the process.

She got up and headed out back. She needed nature to clear her head.

It was still early enough in the year that the cacophony that normally would envelop her in the summer wasn’t in full effect. There were some noises, but most of the animals were dormant this time of year.

The rusty hinges announced Steve’s presence, and Becca braced herself for their old argument. She was pleasantly surprised when she felt him hug her, draping the throw she’d used earlier around both of them.

“Steve, I need to tell you something. When we first started dating and I knew I was falling in love with you, sure, I was distracted. It was new and I’d never felt that before and I didn’t know if you were going to stick around with me, with us. I didn’t have the insight you did. No man had ever wanted to stick around, well, no man I was willing to have stick around.” Becca didn’t like not seeing his reactions as she talked about something that was this important. She turned and took a step back, needing to see him.

“I didn’t know we were going to get married, that you wanted to marry me. I wanted every part of you I could get in case all I had you for was a little while, something I’d be able to remember, so yeah, you were a distraction.

“I knew-”

“Stop. I need to say this and I need you to hear me. It was- no, no. I need to see you. You’re entirely too tall. Go, sit down on the step.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes! Damn it, go sit!”

Becca saw his shoulders slump and felt about as big as a flea. She followed him and joined him as he sat, startling him as she threw her arms around him and kissed him, soundly. She took his face in her hands and pressed their foreheads together before sitting up and looking at him, really looking at him. She’d always said he wasn’t a distraction, but realized it was time to acknowledge what had really happened.

“I’m frustrated because I thought we were done with this conversation. You were, emphasis on were, a distraction. It was our trip to Napa when you took care of me because I got sick from drinking entirely too much wine, God, I was such a bitch that trip, too. It was after that trip when you called me up to arrange for our next date, that’s when I knew you were sticking around for the long haul and that was all I needed. I calmed down after that-”

“I thought I’d done something wrong and that’s why you didn’t want to see me.”

“Not even close. I knew, I mean, I didn’t know you wanted to marry me, but I knew I hadn’t scared you off.”

“Takes a helluva lot more to scare me.”

“I know. I don’t think I’ve ever scared you.”

“When you didn’t wake up after the accident, you scared me.”

“No, yeah, I mean, that kind of stuff, yeah. But I haven’t scared you.”

“You’re right. You’re always right. You haven’t actually scared me. Well, you did when you went screaming into the bathroom when I got here-"

"I am so sorry-"

"Honey, you didn't have your memories. You can't be responsible when you didn't have them. It’s been more the thought of my life without you in it that scares me.”

“Well, I’m not going anywhere.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“I can promise that I won’t voluntarily leave.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, I was no longer frantic to cram every experience I wanted to have with you in whatever short time I thought we had, so I calmed down and things evened out for me. I don’t think I’ve ever told you, but I’m better at my job because of you. I’m a better person because of you.”

“That can’t be true.”

“Steve, please listen to what I’m saying and know that I’m serious. You ground me, you take care of me. I feel safe and supported and loved because of you. I don’t think I ever knew what those things were until I met you. I can be myself around you and I know you won’t judge me. I’m, I don’t know, free with you, freer than I’ve ever been. I don’t have to hide myself, to hide anything about me. You see me as a human being and not some, I don’t know, whatever it is that they call me-”

“You know exactly what they call you.”

“They make me sound like a fucking robot, and that’s all Mitch sees me as, it’s all he wants for me. You don’t do that. I’m flesh and blood and feelings with you. You see past all the stuff that isn’t important. You make me human. And it’s so much more than that, I’m not anywhere close to doing you justice.”

“How could it possibly be more?”

Becca wanted to shake Steve until he gave up, until he stopped fighting her. She couldn’t understand why he didn’t get it.

“I couldn’t do this, I wouldn’t be this person you see before you if it weren’t for you. You are nothing less than my center. You keep me whole and you keep me focused and you keep me safe and I feel loved. And if you’re that good for me, an already formed and adult-sized human, I cannot even begin to imagine the lives our children are going to have. I know you’re going to be the best dad. You don’t know how much I wish I could tell you right now that I’m pregnant.”

Becca realized she could do something about that last statement and kissed Steve, trying to unbutton his shirt and becoming frustrated that her fingers wouldn’t work. She grabbed hold and tried to rip the buttons off but that wouldn’t work, either. He grabbed her hands, hoping his touch would calm her.

“Baby, it’s cold outside.”

“That better be your way of saying ‘get your ass inside so I can make love to you all night’.”

“All night? You don’t want to sleep tonight?”

“I want us to make a baby tonight.”

“I thought you wanted-”

“I don’t want to wait. I can’t wait.”

“Then you need to get up.”

“Why?”

“Because if we’re gonna go make a baby I’m not gonna do that outside.”

Becca’s entire body came alive with joy. She felt goosebumps and shivered and glowed at the thought: a baby!

“Oh, but if we make her outside, then we can call her Fern or Ivy, or something to commemorate it.”

“If it’s a boy we can call him Stone.”

She tried. Becca tried not to laugh, but she failed. Miserably. She could barely get her response out. “I am not naming my son after an inanimate object.”

Steve took full advantage of her preoccupation and got them both up before tossing her over his shoulder, grinning shamelessly at her shrieks.

“What are you doing? Put me down!”

“No way, woman. You just told me you want a baby, so that’s exactly what I’m going to give you.”

Becca’s “oh, goody!” could be heard over the squeaky screen door, her giggles echoing out into the cool night air until all that was left was the sound of a few night critters.

* * *

It was several hours later that Steve, blanket hastily thrown around his hips, had finally gone out to retrieve the over-baked pears from the grill. While in the kitchen, tossing some of the sweet cinnamon-flavored mush over vanilla bean gelato, Becca called to him.

“Steve?”

“Hold on.”

It couldn’t have been more than 30 seconds later when she called to him again. “Steve?”

“I said hold on, I’m almost done.”

“I have an itch on my nose.”

He finally strolled back to their bedroom, intent upon feeding his wife.

“Did you hear me?”

He took his time as he tossed the throw to the chair in the corner and arranged himself on the bed next to Becca. “What?”

“I have an itch on my nose.”

He savored a creamy, almost liquid spoonful, the pear mush still warm from the grill. “Okay.”

Becca eyed him when he didn’t move.

“Steve, please, would you scratch it for me?”

“You want me to scratch it for you?”

“It’s either that or untie my hands. Your choice.”

He took another bite as he decided what to do, and realized that she’d been restrained for a while. He leaned over and untied the scarf, kissing her wrists and rubbing them to help the circulation.

It was several minutes later, dessert consumed, when Becca sat up and scooched her way to Steve, sitting cross-legged in front of him. She took his left hand in hers and traced the silver infinity symbol on the leather band around his wrist, following the cool metal in endless figure eights.

Steve knew something was up when she didn’t say anything. "What are you thinking about?" Rather than responding, she focused on their symbol. He was surprised when she finally spoke up.

“I think it’s time you know why it is that I’ve had people after me.”

“You have your memory back?”

“Most of it. There’s some stuff after the accident… I don’t know if I was unconscious the whole time or if it’s the dream I’ve been having, stuff doesn’t make sense. But other than that, yeah. Pretty sure.”

“Since when?”

“A little bit ago, when I remembered about the driver.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Becca didn’t like hearing his frustration.

“Italy. The accident. Remembering the driver. That was more important at the time.”

Steve let it sink in. His wife was back! Her words rattled in his head and when his elation abated, he grew concerned.

“You know why people were after you?”

“That’s the thing, Steve.” Later, he’d swear that the look of fear in her eyes stopped his heart for a beat or two. “I don’t think it’s over.” She swallowed a couple of times before continuing. “See, it’s like this. I created something that was pretty revolutionary, something used by all our military. You know how it used to be the case that with stuff like mustard gas or other chemical weapons that you’d have to wait until you were hit before you could use anything, and timing was critical?”

“You’re the one who came up with that preventative shot?”

Becca couldn’t help her smile.

“There was a team of us. I headed up the team.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed as he smirked. He knew there was more. It was when he cocked his head to the side and raised his brow that she finally gave in. He had her number.

“Yeah, it was me.”

“I know three guys whose lives that shot saved. Hell, Koz is alive because of you!”

“I didn’t… oh. Wow.”

They both took a moment as they let that knowledge sink in.

“No wonder your dad wanted you to stick around. He wanted you to make more-”

“No. They had the formula for how it worked, they didn’t need me. No, he wanted me to make biological weapons.”

“But that’s-”

“Yeah, it is. When I threatened to blow the whistle on him, well, that’s when he stopped with the incessant phone calls and threats.”

“They were after you because of that?”

“I don’t know if it was because of that, or because of what I figured out shortly after I left…”

Becca took several minutes to explain to Steve what she’d discovered. By the time she was done, Steve was shocked and elated and the proudest he could possibly be.

“Well, that makes sense, why they were after you.”

“But I didn’t figure out the vaccine thing until just after I left, and no one but my partner knew about it. I only discussed it with him. They were already after me.”

“How far along are you with your testing?”

“I’ve got so much to do. We’re getting ready for Phase I trials, but it’s looking really promising.”

“You don’t think it’s because of that?”

“I really think they wanted me to do for them what I refused to do for Mitch, create biological weapons, and I don’t think it’s in the past.”

“No, no one’s after you.”

“The truck driver? He was in Ugiristan. His birthmark, I remember that birthmark. He was with the man who shot you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. By the way, about Italy…”

* * *

It was almost a week later that Becca and Steve drove home.

They had a lazy week laying around the cabin, going for hikes, and talking about their future. Becca had made a decision while they were laying out their plans. While she wanted to continue working, she decided to step down as the chief researcher and take less and less on and spend more time on the family, once they had one, of course. She even thought about selling her company, but Steve wouldn’t let her put feelers out just yet. Until things were finally settled, he didn’t want her to make a hasty decision.

Becca would have preferred to drive together, but having come down separately would have meant that they would have had to leave one of their cars there, and neither of them were willing to forgo transportation. Becca was able to make it home in record time. She was looking forward to teasing her husband.

With the garage door closed, she headed straight for the kitchen, intent on figuring out what they’d do for dinner.

She didn’t recognize the bag that was on the counter. Had Steve bought-

“Where the fuck have you been Becky? Do you know how worried I’ve been about you?”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is from Ben's perspective. I feel the need to warn you: although it is vague, there are implications of violence. As I'm sure you've figured out by now, Ben is not a good person.

I want you all to understand what you’re going to be seeing once she gets home. I mean, I’m recording this and when it’s all done, that’s when I’m going to post it, so this isn’t in real time. You’ve all been so helpful and I know you hate her as much as I do and I know you’re going to enjoy what I have in store for her, especially since some of you suggested things that I’m going to do to her. I want you to understand why it’s gonna cost you to see the next video I post. I know it’s a lot, but trust me: it’ll be worth it.

Anyway, some of you know some of this, but you need the whole context to understand. See, I wasn’t always a merc for hire. Like a lot of you, I started in the service. For me, I started my life in the Navy, and I had a promising career. After college I’d made it through basic and was on my first tour when someone noticed something in me and suggested I go for _that_ group, you know the one. I’d made it through training, through hell week. I made it all the way. Everyone wants to be one of them, but no one really understands how fucking hard it is. Sure, there are stories about the hell we had to go through to get to where we are. There was even that movie, when was it, 20 years ago? The one with that chick showing she could do it, too. That was such a laugh.

Anyway, I was moving up the ranks, faster than most, and then that fucking OP happened. No, wait, hold on, _he_ happened. That corrupt Captain hung everything that went wrong on me. He set me up to take the fall. He knew it was going to fail right from the start and he let us walk into that ambush. Damn it, I was set up; it wasn’t my fault that I lost my whole team!

He’d relied on bad intel, and you knew it when you looked at him: he knew it was bad. It was like he was trying to make someone else happy when he knew the mission would go south. He hung the whole fiasco on me. I’d gone from hero to zero in nothing flat. I was drummed out, my wife left me, taking my son…

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Enough about that fucker. The only thing good about being dishonorably discharged: I didn’t ever have to look at his sorry face again.

I’d picked up some odd jobs here and there. My skill set is rather particular and in demand. Hell, most of you have hired me at some point. My reputation grew and grew until I was a hot commodity. I made more money than I knew what to do with, and it was nice to take the jobs I wanted and say no to those I didn’t. I was my own boss that way.

And then some of you? You started to look to me to be the man in charge. I had the experience so it made sense. I put my own crew together, guys I trusted, guys I’d worked with over the years, mostly, and some new ones, too. We did more and more jobs, and more complicated jobs, and we started to be the crew everyone wanted to hire.

Sure, we got into some questionable shit, ran some OPS that were more than a little shady, but that’s when demand shot through the roof. We were turning down jobs left and right and then Renaldo, you remember Renaldo, right? Well, he had the big idea: he wanted to run his own crew. At first, I thought he was looking to leave, but I was wrong. Each of my guys started to run their own crews and we were getting bigger and bigger. I even joked that we needed to go into business, form a company. That sure got a laugh. It was all going really well.

Until.

I was first contacted just after she left her contract job with the Navy. When I realized who she was, that she was the daughter of that asshole Captain-now an Admiral and how the hell does that happen-who stuck it to me, I jumped at the chance to return the favor. I was all set to take her out, and to make it hurt in the worst possible way. I’d had a few ideas, a few ways that I could make her last days on earth be worse than death, worse than death for both of them. The things I could have done to her… I would have made him watch. I would have handcuffed him to a chair and made him watch what I’d planned to do to her, over and over ‘cause I planned on filming it, until he was a shell of the man he’d been. Make him listen to her screams, to her begging, first for mercy and then for death. I mean, what man wants to watch his daughter be humiliated in the worst possible way, tortured, to hear her beg, probably call out for him to save her…

Oh, even better: kidnap both of them and make him watch live, as I took her apart piece by piece, first mentally and then physically, and the worst part of all of it? I even thought about leaving her alive, barely able to function, not even able to tie her own shoes. After what I had planned, that would have been so much better, so much more satisfying. It would have torn him apart.

It wasn’t until after I’d accepted the job, and then I had two other groups contact me and a bidding war broke out so I was curious about why she was so special. When I finally had a winner, that’s when they changed the terms. They told me they wanted her alive, that they had to have her alive, that if she died or if she was harmed, that not only wouldn’t I get paid, but that a bounty would be put on my head. You should have heard me rail at them. I wanted to turn down the job and hurt her anyway, but 20 million Euros was just too good.

I studied up on that bitch. I thought about taking her right from her home, but I knew that was a tricky move. Anything where she just up and disappeared and her father would continue to look for her until he found her. I knew I had to figure out a better place to take her, but where?

Providence shown down on me when I caught wind of her plans to visit that nerd conference in Ugiristan. Why the organizers decided to hold something for the eggheads in one of the most embattled countries was beyond me, but it made my job significantly easier. Provide arms to the local freedom fighters, incite them to hit the conference, and sit back and watch the carnage. I’d planned to swoop in and offer her assistance, pluck her right from her room, but damn it if Superman Steve Liberty didn’t beat me to it.

Sure, I waited until the rebels were all done with their RPGs, I wasn’t stupid; I wasn’t about to get myself killed. If I’d known that he was there? I would’ve pulled her out before everything started.

They were supposed to target the room next to hers, but ended up targeting hers by mistake. It was blown to hell, completely in shreds. Once I got ‘em to stop and headed in, I didn’t find her, no blood, neither. I searched and searched and searched, but she wasn’t anywhere to be found. How the hell had she escaped?

I gave everyone an incentive to find her and that didn’t even help. Poor, stupid Renaldo, even got himself killed. I’d always wondered, though, who he’d confronted in that shop.

Reports kept coming in that they’d found her. Women were being dragged though the streets and presented to me, all in an effort to claim the million Euro bounty I’d placed on her head. I’ve always wondered if that made it, the mad scramble after the fiasco at the hotel, even worse.

I’d heard through the grapevine that they thought that she’d been found. One of the squads had fanned out and was looking pretty much door to door for her. That much cash on anyone’s head would do that. I figured it would motivate the troops to find her, and I’d been right.

When I got the call that Renaldo was down I almost wasn’t surprised. He’d been the one most focused on the money when I put the bounty on her head. A million Euros was probably a bit steep, but I needed her. I couldn’t let that bitch slip away.

I knew, okay, I didn’t know, but I knew deep down that she had help getting away. She wasn’t the kind of person to have survival skills so when she wasn’t in her room, and when no one could find her in the hours after, I knew she had help. I didn’t know the kind of help she’d had, though.

I laid out a hell of a lot of cash to pull that job off, and if that asshole hadn’t been there, I would’ve done it, too. No one would have been the wiser and no one would have ever known she was still alive. My plan was perfect.

Why the hell did he have to be there? If only my shot hadn’t gone wide, I could have taken him out.

Well, now’s my time to get even with him.

When I saw that he got hit, I knew they’d take him to Turkey to patch him up. I contacted my buyer and let ‘em know I wasn’t done. I just needed to regroup and I’d have her in hand. They delayed too long, though. It was a couple days later that they contacted me, told me they didn’t want her, she was too hot, something about she was untouchable, at least for now. They said they might be interested, but to wait a couple of years.

That was all a couple of years ago. I waited, patiently, biding my time until I could get even. I kept tabs on her and wasn’t surprised when I heard she married that lug. I wasn’t sure who I wanted to stick it to more: her father, her husband, or her. She is such an arrogant bitch. They’ve all fucked up my life.

After that botched job-it should have been a cakewalk-I couldn’t get a single gig. I went from making money hand over fist to being blocked from all jobs.

Fuck, I hate that bitch.

So, as I was saying, I kept tabs on her, learned about all her plans, any time that she was taking time off I was hoping she’d go somewhere I could knock that husband of hers out and snatch her. She never did, though.

That was, until I found out he was taking her to Italy.

The man got complacent. If she was my wife? I never would have let her out of my sight, and not just for protection. I mean, well, you’ll see when I get her here. She’s got a fine ass.

Sure, I could have tried it, outright taking her in Italy, but I was low on funds from all that cash I’d put out on the Ugiristan job and then not having a single paying gig in over two years. I couldn’t have bought everyone off that I would’ve needed to. But, as luck would have it, I read an article on memory manipulation and hatched a plan. I needed help, though, and I needed to be ready in case she was able to make it out of Italy. That’s where Dr. Sanderson came in. He was entirely too easy to turn. All I had to do was buy a couple of his markers and threaten to tell the good ol’ U S of A that he had a gambling problem and he’d lose all his lucrative government work.

I told him about my plan and he said he said he’d help. He didn’t want to, but I made my point when I took his son and messengered back his hand with a note to expect his head with the next shipment. That got his attention. He finally listened and agreed to help me out. I didn’t twist his arm too much, I mean, I didn’t do anything to _him_ , not until a few days ago, anyway. He was starting to demand too much from me. That bitch had gotten under his skin and was threatening him with his license and he was wanting a greater percentage of what I’d told him I was going to get for her, for filming what I’m going to do to her. At least I don’t have to split the take with him anymore, more for me.

Damn it, Italy should have worked!

When my plan was ready I contacted the buyer again and he agreed. If I’d known who he was, though, I might have thought twice. You know what they say: luck favors the prepared. Except it didn’t.

Granted, we only had a little time with her in that operating suite, but it should have worked. We had all the right people there. Her husband was strapped down to that table and, well, he wasn’t actually her husband, but we’d found someone who looked enough like him that, with the right lighting and the drugs that the shrink gave her, had her think it was him. We grilled and grilled and grilled her, made her think we were going to kill her husband. She heard from the not-so-good doctor, from me, and from the guest we’d brought in special for the occasion-the buyer. ‘Steve’ even got in on the act, telling her she needed to cooperate. She went ballistic when we sliced him wide open. Didn’t blame her, though. He was squealing like a stuck pig. Bleeding like it, too.

It was that trauma, though, plus the extra dose of drugs the idiot doctor gave her, that pushed her over the edge. When she came to she let loose about all the explosions and stuff going off. Man, she was putting up a ruckus. Luckily, we’d already carted off whatshisface since he wasn’t of use to us anymore. Who knows what she would have done when confronted with a dead ‘husband’.

Damn the Admiral for getting her out of there!

Well, joke’s on them. I just heard their garage door and her car. She’s home and Steve’s not.

That bitch is gonna fuckin’ pay for what she did to me.


	14. Chapter 14

Becca had never felt so exposed, so unsafe, in all her life. It only took her brain a few seconds to process everything, and she was instantly terrified. They knew Ben was a threat, but they didn’t know he’d be so brazen. She did what she could to cover since she wasn’t sure what he was up to.

“Where I was is no concern of yours.” She dropped her purse on the counter, frantically thinking of things she should do. She needed to get word to Steve so he could get rid of this man once and for all.

“Were you with your lover? As your husband, I’m going to have to insist that you don’t see that man anymore.”

She was tired of dealing with him. Maybe if she confronted him he’d back off? She spun on her heel and stalked towards him.

“Who I was with is no concern of yours, either. Leave; get out of my house.”

“I’m not leaving my home.”

Her world temporarily dimmed before coming into sharp focus. “God damn it! I said get the fuck out of my house!” Becca had been sure that her sudden outburst would have spurred him into action. When it didn’t, her level of frustration grew exponentially. Not knowing where Steve was, she had only one idea of what she should be doing. She pulled her phone from her pocket. “Now, or I’m calling the cops. In fact, you’re trespassing. I’m calling them anyway.”

Ben grabbed her other hand and got her attention.

“If you want Steve dead, go ahead and do that.

Her thumb, poised to dial 9-1-1 and summon the cops, stilled as she got a chill that set her on high alert. “What do you mean?”

“How much more clear do I need to be?” He pulled out his phone and dialed a number. “If you hear sirens, kill him. Also, if he arrives before her car is gone, kill him.” He hung up the phone and took a dramatic pause. “Steve will die if you call the cops.”

Becca heard a clicking sound. Her world stopped as she realized Ben had a gun in the hand not holding her wrist. She didn’t like guns, and she liked them even less when they were pointed in her direction.

“I can’t have him interrupting us. Contact him and tell him, I don’t know, something, anything that will delay his arrival. I’m not ready for him to come home yet.”

The icy stare from Ben told her he meant business. She cleared the numbers and started to dial-

“No no no, I know you have some sort of a code set up, I don’t want you to warn him. Text him.”

Recalling their plan, she typed out her message, Ben watching.

Steve, do me a favor and grab some chicken on your way home

It took longer than Ben expected for Steve to reply. He was fidgety and checking the phone every few seconds.

“He’s driving a car. He can’t just send a text.”

Finally, a text came in.

Sure. You want me to pick up some cucumbers and honey, too?

Becca almost sighed: their code worked. Ben still wasn’t pleased

“The store isn’t going to be enough time.”

“I’ll have him pick up some tequila. The store he always goes to is across town.”

She’d wanted to leave no room for doubt.

Please. Oh, and some tequila would be great, too. I’m in the mood for a margarita.

Steve was all too aware of her hatred of the liquor.

“Okay, he’ll be out of our hair for a few extra minutes. What now?”

Ben grabbed her phone and shoved it in his pocket. “Walk.” Becca stood there, glaring at Ben. She knew the odds of her surviving rested with her not getting into a car with him.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Don’t worry, we don’t have far to go.”

“You’re holding a gun on me and you tell me not to worry? Are you stupid?”

“Don’t make me angry.”

“What, you don’t like it when people point out your stupidity to you? Happens all the time, doesn’t it, that’s why you hate it, isn’t it?”

“Shut up. God, you are such a bitch.”

“I love it how people who don’t know me think they have me all figured out.”

The smile on Ben’s face was anything but warm. That smile would make nitrogen freeze. He spun her and shoved her forward with the gun.

“Be sure to thank Steve. He made this part so much easier on me since he soundproofed your offices. He’ll never know you’re right under his nose. I get to take my time with you. When he finds you, when he realizes you were right here all along, when he sees what I’m going to do to you? He’s gonna be a broken man. Oh, I know I know, your car’s here and he’d know you were home. I have someone coming to take care of that. We’ll make him think you left him, left the country because you couldn’t stand him.”

Becca was relieved not to be going anywhere, but she really didn’t like what he was saying, that whatever he was going to do to her would cause Steve to be a broken man. Her stomach turned as her mind started racing to what he could possibly have in mind. What if something happened to Steve? What if the tracking thing didn’t work and he left, trying to find her? What if he took the bait and headed to the airport?

So many things ran through her head that she had a moment of panic when the door shut behind them, isolating her from the world.

No one would be able to hear her if she screamed.

She knew it, Ben knew it, but she had the overwhelming desire to scream anyway. What the hell, why not? What did she have to lose?

Her throat hurt by the time Ben slapped her. He’d found it amusing at first, watching the woman he’d come to loathe panic, but he couldn’t let her go on and on. His ears started to ring. Besides, he was planning on recording what he was going to do to her, and he needed her screams to be heard. He wanted Steve and Mitch to be haunted by her screams, by her begging, and whatever else he could get to come out of her, for the rest of their lives.

He hadn’t planned on her response.

Her palm stung from the force of her slap.

Ben couldn't believe she'd actually got a hand on him. “Fuck! Why would you hit me?”

_I should have balled my fist! I should have hit him, tried to make a break for it!_

Instead, she found herself on the floor, her lip bloodied and her jaw aching from his fist.

Momentarily taken aback by Ben's rage, Becca found her own welling up from deep within.

“Why wouldn’t I? You hit me, asshole! You have your head so far up your butt and you still don’t think your shit stinks.”

“What? You’re not making any sense.”

Becca decided to slow things down just a little, see if she could give Steve some time to get home before Ben started to do whatever he planned. It wouldn’t hurt to delay his plans, either.

“You’re not going to kill me, you pretty much told me that. Of course I’d retaliate, slap you, too.”

“I never said I wasn’t going to kill you.”

“But you said-”

“I threatened Steve. I said he’d be a broken man when he found you. I said I’m going to do things to you. I never said I wouldn’t kill you, you spoiled bitch!”

“I'm spoiled? Why, because I slapped you?”

“Among other things. But that’s okay. You’ll get yours. Better late than never.”

“Better late than… What do you mean?”

“I should have had you back in Ugiristan.”

There was no way he’d just referenced-

“What did you just say?”

He let it sink in, what he’d just said. He stood tall, letting her have it.

“Ugiristan. I should have had you back in Ugiristan.”

* * *

_April, almost 3 years ago…._

_Becca had just come back from a breakfast meeting and was in her hotel room, gathering up her things to head down to the conference for the day. There were going to be some lively debates and she wanted a front row seat for-_

_Startled by the sound coming from outside the hotel, she could have sworn someone had lit off a ton of firecrackers. Was there some sort of celebration going on? Was there a holiday they hadn’t been told about?_

_A loud boom in the hallway caught her attention, as did more of the rapid-fire pop pop pop-_

_That’s gunfire!_

_Becca froze for about half a second before kicking off her pumps and shoving her skirt down her legs. She knew she needed to be better prepared for whatever was going on._

_Jeans… boots… she put on her leather jacket and stuffed her pockets with her cell phone, wallet, and passport. She grabbed a hair tie and was headed for the door when she tripped over her discarded pump and fell-_

_All hell seemed to break loose in her room as just that instant. She was showered with glass as she first heard a loud explosion outside of her room before she felt someone grab her hand and drag her from the room into the hallway as her room exploded under a hail of bullets, chunks of drywall and shrapnel flying all over. Before she could figure out what was happening, he’d picked her up, tossing her over his shoulder like a 20 pound sack of anything and carried her further into the hotel, away from the barrage of bullets. He took a couple of steps down an internal hallway and that’s when she noticed that the emergency lights were on, the power obviously having been cut to the hotel. He set her down and that’s when she had her first look at her protector._

_Becca gasped, realizing he was the handsome stranger she’d seen in the hotel bar two nights previous. She’d caught him eyeing her and had decided to go over to talk to him but when she’d left her dinner companions and looked for him, he was gone._

_Except now, here he was, right in front of her._

_“Rebecca, are you okay?”_

_Surely she was imagining that he knew her name. Surely there was still ringing in her ears and they were playing tricks on her. There was no way he knew her name._

_“Rebecca?” She felt the roughness of his glove as he wiped her face. When he was done, he held her chin so she would look at him. “Rebecca, we need to get you out of here. You’re not safe.”_

_“What?”_

_“You’re not safe here. We need to get you out of here. I need you to come with me.”_

_“I don’t know you.”_

_“CAP sent me.”_

_The familiarity of what he just said startled her._

_“What did you just say?”_

_“CAP sent me to keep an eye on you. I need to get you out of here. Follow me.”_

_“Wait a minute!”_

_Bullets tearing through the other end of the hallway convinced her she needed to move post haste. They hustled out of the hotel and that was when Becca was confronted with bedlam. Explosions were happening with regularity, and they kept getting closer, louder, CLOSER! The pop-pop-pop of gunfire interspersed in between the explosions and Becca felt like she’d been dropped into the middle of a movie._

_“Becca! Get a move on!”_

_She hustled and caught up to-_

_She had to shout over the din to be heard. “What’s your name?”_

_He tossed it back over his shoulder in her direction, not stopping their forward progression to wherever they needed to be._

_“Liberty.”_

_“When you say CAP sent you, you mean-”_

_He ducked into an alley and grabbed her wrist, pulling her after him. He knew she was going to have tons of questions and didn’t want to spend any time out in the open if they could help it._

_“The Admiral, your father. I’ll give you answers to your questions when we’re safe. I need you to be quiet for now. Don’t bring attention to yourself.”_

_“Why did CAP send you?”_

_“Your father sent me to ensure your safety. We need to get you out of here. We need to get you back home.”_

_“But the conference-”_

_“That conference is over. We don’t have time for this. Rebecca, I’ll answer your questions when we’re safe. For now, just follow me.”_

_They headed down to the other end of the alley and darted across the street. Liberty kept them in the alley, figuring anyone looking for Rebecca would expect her to stay on city streets. It was when they were crossing their third street that he changed tactics and darted into a store._

_“Get behind the counter. Come on, move!”_

_“What’s going on?”_

_“Shh.”_

_“But I-”_

_“Get down!”_

_After she hunched down, Becca heard footsteps crunching by outside._

_Steve couldn’t figure out why the men outside were still alive. Anyone under his command never would have spoken at that volume during a mission._

_“…is it real?”_

_“The bounty? Yeah. Jon…”_

_The two mercenaries didn’t check the store, instead walking by, their conversation continuing._

_“I need you to stay here while I check on things. Do you know how to use a gun?”_

_Becca took a second, needing to let that question process before she nodded._

_Liberty pulled out a black semi-automatic, flipped off the safety, and handed it over._

_“When I come back in, I’ll announce myself. I’ll call out Liberty. Got it?”_

_“Yeah. Do you know how long you’ll be?”_

_“Not more than a few minutes, tops. Promise, I’ll be back to get you and we’ll get you out of here.”_

_Not long after he left, she heard footsteps approach and enter the store. She’d hidden under the counter where the cash register was, so she wasn’t in immediate line of sight. Becca hoped she was in the clear-_

_“I see you under there. Come on out.”_

_Becca froze, wondering what she should do. Should she stall in the hopes Liberty would be back before anything could happen? Could she fend him off if need be? Could she use the-_

_She screamed as he grabbed her by the hair and hauled her out from under the counter._

_The thunderous bam! when she pulled the trigger, the spray of flesh- (oh God I can’t think about that) told her she could do what was necessary when threatened._

_Although shaken, she was glad to be alive._

_She couldn’t take her eyes from the lifeless body on the floor as she crawled back under the counter and barely heard Liberty when he came back in. It wasn’t until he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her out of the store that she realized he was talking to her._

_“I promise you you’ll get out of here alive. No way will I let anything happen to you. We just need to keep moving, get to the rendezvous point and get you in a chopper. The embassy isn’t safe, he’ll have people there waiting for you. I’ll get you out of here. I promise.”_

_“What do you mean?”_

_“There you are. Are you okay? I know-”_

_“Hold on!” She tried to come to a stop, but Liberty wouldn’t let her._

_“We have to get you to the rendezvous. We have no time to waste.”_

_“But who is this ‘he’?”_

_“Rebecca, after you’re out of here I’ll answer any questions you have, promise. ‘Til then, I need to concentrate on getting you out of here.”_

_They used every means possible and got out of the city and into the southern suburbs. Liberty knew where he needed to be, and knew they were running behind schedule. They’d had to duck into a house along the way, when a patrol decided to have a smoke instead of doing their job. If he’d been their commander he’d-_

_He didn’t have time to think of that. He needed to get Rebecca out of there. The longer they were in that city, the higher the likelihood that they’d be found and that she’d be taken away from him, and he couldn’t have that._

_He checked the backyard and saw a way to get past the patrol so they took it._

_They wove in and out of the backyards in the suburbs to get to a train station. There’d be enough space for the helicopter to land._

_They came so close to getting out without either of them getting a scratch._

_Liberty thought they were in the clear as they approached the train station, but no such luck. Only steps from being safe inside, they heard a sharp crack before he felt that awful punch in his side, letting him know he’d been hit. He shoved Becca inside the station as he called for them to pull her out._

_When they left the cover of the building to get onto the helicopter, Liberty saw the movement out of the corner of his eye and lunged, shoving Becca towards the helicopter just before he saw the muzzle-flash. He rolled and returned fire, giving them only enough time to board and take off. He turned to her to check that she was alright and saw her staring out the helicopter._

* * *

“You were there! You were with the man who shot Steve!”

“Too bad he lunged to shove you out of the way. I’d a killed him.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, people, be prepared for this one. There is talk of things that should never be contemplated. There is hatred. There is death. Death is ahead.
> 
> You are warned.

“Oh my God! You’re him, you’re that guy, oh, what’s his name? Um…”

“Jon McNichol.”

_Ben is Jon. Ben, no, Jon hasn’t tried to snatch me. Something’s wrong… Delay, I have to delay whatever is going on here. Steve! I need Steve!_

“Why are you- I was told no one would come after me again.”

“This isn’t really ‘official’. It isn’t sanctioned by anyone. Well, that’s not completely true. One man, he wants what’s in your head. I don’t know yet if I’m going to give it to him. It might be more worth it to make him pay for what he’s done to me.”

“Hold on, what’s he done to you?”

“He made my life a living hell.”

Becca took a step back, trying to make heads or tails of what was being said.

“This doesn’t make any sense. What do I have to do with any of this?”

The smugness of Jon’s answer caught her off guard. “You hold a very special place in his heart.”

Becca’s blood ran cold. Was Steve really the conspirator she’d thought, however briefly? The past week had dispelled any fears she’d had. Had she been wrong about Steve, had he fooled her? She had to know.

“Who are you talking about?”

“Your father, of course.”

“My f-” she stopped herself. She hadn’t been prepared for that one. “Why would Mitch want you to kidnap me?”

“There are so many reasons. For one, I know he doesn’t like Steve, thinks you’re wasting your time with him.”

“What is it going to take to get-”

“Mostly he wants the secrets you have locked in your brain.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“No, I’m not.”

“What secrets?”

From behind her, she heard her closet open and a familiar voice-

“You know exactly what secrets, Becky.”

The very last piece of the puzzle erupted in Becca’s mind as memories of Italy after the crash crystallized. She’s strapped down to a gurney in a surgical suite where Jon and Dr. Sanderson have been tormenting her.

_“I am not telling you anything!”_

_A disembodied voice over an intercom bellowed-_

_“If you know what’s good for Steve you will.”_

_She looked around the room, not for the first time registering Steve, similarly bound to a gurney and gagged-but it wasn’t Steve, was it?-desperately trying to find the source of that statement. She had to strain to see the familiar figure in the room overlooking the surgical suite-_

_“Mitch? What the hell are you doing here?”_

Becca’s memory echoed in her head as she voiced the same question. “Mitch? What the hell are you doing here?”

Jon, eyes narrowed and darting around the room, was clearly displeased at the turn of events. “How long have you been here?” He stepped around the sofa, blocking the door so neither of them could leave without going through him.

Sneering, Mitch barely addressed Jon. “Irrelevant.” He turned back to Becca. “You never should have left, Becky. This could have all been avoided had you just stayed on and kept working for me.”

Becca sought solace in Steve’s anniversary pendant. She worried the stone, gathering strength from knowing he’d take care of her, if he got home in time. Realizing just how much of her life had been dictated by the hateful man in front of her, she vowed _no more_.

“You wanted me to break the law, to make chemical and biological weapons.”

“I knew it! I was right! You do remember!” Mitch bellowed, secure in the knowledge that no one would hear them.

Becca didn’t like being yelled at, and she sure didn’t like feeling like a scolded child. She stood tall, full of resolve. _Absolutely no more_. “It doesn’t matter what I do or don’t remember. I’m never telling you a fucking thing!”

“When I turn Jon loose on you, you’ll change your tune. See, I know some of what he plans on doing to you and I approve.”

Jon’s gasp caught her attention and the confusion on his face momentarily distracted her. He voiced the question on both their minds.

“What? How the hell do you know that?”

“You forget where I contracted with you. You’ve been spewing your fantasies about what you want to do to her to anyone and everyone you can think of, getting everyone to comment and give you better, more sadistic ideas. Who do you think gave you most of your ideas?”

Becca couldn’t believe her ears. What alternate universe had she landed in? “You’d turn a madman loose on your own daughter?”

The Admiral spat his response. “You’re not my daughter.”

“Since when?”

“Since your slut of a mother conceived you when she had an affair. She thought I didn’t know. She was getting ready to leave me, which was unacceptable. I made her boyfriend disappear and had my fun with her. God, it was fun making her think she was crazy.”

_Alternate universe. It’s the only explanation for everything._

“She realized who she’d messed with too late. I showed her. The last thing I said to her before I saw her life leave her body was that I was going to take my revenge out on you, make your life a living hell. It took a while, but I think I succeeded.”

Becca stumbled back, bumping into a bookcase, shocked. She wasn’t his daughter, he’d killed her mother, _and her father-who was her father_? Did he actually just admit to killing two people? Now he was conspiring with someone who was planning on doing who knew what, unspeakable hideous vile things, to her. Who was this man? She’d never felt so violated.

“So see, I don’t care about you. In fact, I wish you’d never been born.”

She knew she needed to get her head back in the game if she had any hope of surviving this ordeal. She sought out her pendant again, and her resolve to survive whatever they threw her way hardened.

“Then you wouldn’t have your precious antidote.”

She was happy to know that she could still make him think. Maybe she had a shot.

“You do have a point. Tell you what, if I’m going to let you live, I have conditions.”

Becca couldn’t believe her ears. “Conditions!?”

“You are going to divorce your husband.”

“Never!”

“You are going to come back to work for me.”

“You're delusional. Not in a million years.”

“You are going to sign your company over to me.”

That demand stopped Becca in her tracks. “Why do you want my company?”

“For the permanent vaccines you’ve created. Why else?”

She wanted to do nothing more than slap the smug look off Mitch’s face. But, wait-

“How the hell do you know about those?”

“How do you think? I bugged your offices.”

Becca waited for him, sure he was going to say something that would make all of this make sense. When he didn’t, she couldn’t help herself.

“Are you high?”

“If you don’t agree to my terms, your life will never be the same. Your life will cease to exist as you know it. I know Jon wants to make you suffer and that suits me just fine. In fact, it’ll make me happy, see you tortured, see you broken down so you’re unrecognizable as the entitled bitch you are now.” He got that look that people get when an idea comes to them. His eyes went wide and he almost looked…happy. “That gives me an idea. I’ll have someone come in after he does everything he wants to do and finish you off.”

_Now he’s threatening to kill me?_

“Oh, I see that look, I don’t mean kill you, no, that would be too easy for you. I’m thinking: lobotomy.”

_Surely this is a nightmare. Surely he didn’t say what I think he just said._

“Yeah, much better. I’ll force Steve to watch the whole thing." Becca was sure this was all a joke, except, Mitch never joked, about anything. "I know some of what Jon wants to do to you, how he wants to torture you, how intimate he’ll make it, and it will drive Steve mad. When it’s all done, after you’ve signed your company over to me, after you’ve told me all your secrets, I’ll make him watch you become no one, nothing but an unresponsive rag doll.”

Becca knew him, she knew the man in front of her and she knew he meant it, what he was saying. Hearing what the man who had called himself her father her whole life wanted to do to her, she knew she didn’t have long to figure out what she was going to do. What she did know was that she couldn’t let the panic she was sensing take over.

“I don’t know, Jon, on second thought, a lobotomy would be too quick. Maybe, suffocation, yeah. We slowly suffocate her, plastic bag over her head and watch her pass out, keep her deprived of oxygen and then revive her, do it over and over so we can test her when she comes to, so she knows, each time she’s conscious, that she’s that much closer to being a vegetable. I think that just might be better. Make her a vegetable, charge Steve under the Patriot Act, and make sure he gets a tape of her once a week, just lying there, doing nothing."

_This cannot be happening!_

"As her loving father I’d put her on life support, naturally, in the hopes that something could be done, but, you know, send her to the crappiest facility." When his eyes lit up and his Mr. Grinch grin broke out, Becca steadied herself. "Just had an even better idea. I'll pay someone, like Jon here, to record himself abusing her, violat-”

Becca couldn’t handle any more. “You are insane!”

“No. I am someone used to getting his-

Her closet opened, the doors flung wide and fast, crashing into the wall, as Steve came tearing out, startling all of them. Becca, not understanding how he could have come out of her closet when her father had just been in there, glanced and saw a panel open between his office and hers. She watched as he leapt over the back of the sofa and grabbed Mitch before he registered that Steve was actually in the room. When Mitch reached for the gun in his belt holster, Steve wrenched it free and knocked him on the temple, stunning and knocking him to the ground.

Steve was fast, but even he couldn’t be in two places at once. He wasn’t able to get to Jon before he’d grabbed Becca, shoving the muzzle of his gun into her neck.

“Stop right there, or you watch your precious Rebecca die.”

Becca had never seen Steve as enraged as he was. It was only the threat on her life that brought him back to his senses, halting him in his tracks. He became still, eyes darting around the room, hoping to find something that would give him an advantage.

Becca knew that if they gave Jon too much time, things would not go their way. She thought back to all her training, everything that Steve had shown her since he’d saved her. She knew a sudden change in position might be their best shot. She waited until she had his attention, mouthing _I love you_ before making her move.

Becca dropped to her knees. At least, she tried. The sudden downward momentum caught Jon off guard. Initially thinking that she’d passed out from all the excitement- _she’s a weak woman, of course she’d pass out_ -he dropped so he could catch her. The gun no longer at her head, she took her opportunity, twisting away from him and curling up into a ball with her back to him. She missed whatever it was that Steve did. All she knew was that a few seconds later, Jon was on the floor next to her, dazed, blood streaming from a cut on his cheek.

Steve grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her up as he took a step back. Had Becca remained on the ground he might have seen the gun Jon pulled sooner. He was able to shove Becca toward the door, out of the way as he twisted, gun in hand to take the man down, desperate to end this madness once and for all.

Two shots rang out, the second sounding more like an echo of the first, just before two thuds, Jon's eyes open but no longer seeing.

When it was still and silent for a few seconds, Becca turned, fearing the worst.

Crumpled on the floor, blood was flowing from Steve’s leg at an alarming rate. She rushed to him, eyes only for him, and missed Mitch getting up.

She was over Steve, pressing as hard as she could on his leg, doing everything in her power to stop the bleeding, when Mitch grabbed her by her hair and tried to pull her off of him. She bent and swung her arm around, aiming as high as she could, her elbow colliding with his rib cage.

Suddenly freed, Becca’s medical training kicked into high gear as she put pressure on his leg once again. Becca was surprised to hear sirens pulling up to her house.

“Don’t you die on me. Don’t you dare die on me, Steve. I’ll hate you forever if you do.”

“Not planning on it. Love you too much. Shit, it’s getting cold.”

To Becca's horror, Steve's eyes fluttered closed. “God damn it! You stay awake, you hear me! Steve, open your eyes, open your eyes, baby. Don’t you dare leave me alone. You know I can’t do this alone.”

From behind her, the man who had caused all the trouble in her life spoke. “I knew he wouldn’t be able to protect you.”

She scrambled, her hand searching for and finding Mitch’s gun by Steve’s side. Rage. All she knew was rage. Becca didn’t think twice as she turned and fired, hitting Mitch in the abdomen and chest. His surprised look was the last thing that registered for Becca as she took aim and shot him just below his left eye. She’d always been amazed that something so small entering the human body would cause such damage as it exited.

Turning back to the still form on the floor, Becca collapsed over Steve, searching frantically for a pulse with one hand as the other tried to stem any bleeding. She drowned out the calls of the paramedics entering her house with her screams.

“Steve!”


	16. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so the story comes to an end...

Jon had had it wrong: Becca’s office wasn’t soundproofed. Well, it was, but when they’d moved in Steve had the foresight to put in microphones and a hidden panel between their offices, just in case. There had been that enormous bounty on her head that had brought them together, after all…

Steve had ensured he arrived home ahead of Becca since the silent alarms in the house had been triggered. He wasn’t sure what they were up against, but with what Becca had told him, about what she’d discovered and was testing, that she’d figured out how to make vaccines become part of a person’s DNA, part of their natural defense system and that the immunity would pass onto their children, he was sure it had something to do with that, and he’d been right. Well, partly right, anyway.

The men in his house didn’t know it like he did. He was able to scale up the back of the house to get in through a window to their bedroom. He made it to his office with no one noticing him. Steve hadn’t just installed microphones in her office, but a full surveillance system in every room of their house. As much as he’d done to reassure her that no one would ever come after her, he had always suspected that whoever had tried it would try it again and since he’d vowed to ensure her safety, well, nothing was too good for his Becca.

Steve had listened in when Becca got home. He saw her confront the man who had been giving her grief since they got home and when the man turned on his way to her office, he hadn’t been surprised to see it was Jon. He’d thought it a possibility, hell, they’d talked about the possibility that Jon was behind everything while they’d been at their cabin. Becca hadn’t had that final memory, though. Steve wished she had, that when her memories had come back that she would have known that Ben was Jon. They could have been better prepared.

He’d been so close to leaving his office and shooting Jon, but he knew he couldn’t, not if they wanted to find out who was behind everything. That Mitch had been involved was the real surprise.

When Mitch showed himself Steve grew ill. He knew how betrayed Becca would feel at her father- _not her father, what the fuck_ -coming after her. The vile words he used, what he was telling his daughter- _yeah, sure, he wasn’t her father, but he had raised her_ -and knowing he was serious, spurred Steve to action. Thankful he’d put in the hidden connection between their offices, he waited as patiently as he could before taking action. It was when he talked about giving her a- no, Steve couldn’t think that way, couldn’t think it was possible to threaten the most brilliant person he’d ever met, no-and hearing Becca begin to panic, Steve couldn’t let her endure even the thought of what Mitch had been threatening.

Steve knew there’d come a time when he would need to lay his life on the line for his wife, and as he lay dying, he was glad he had and that his wife would be okay. He was sad, though, that he wouldn’t be there when everyone would finally understand what he’d known all along, just how brilliant she was…

* * *

What had gone on in the Liberty house had been too shocking for it not to make national news. A married couple fighting for their life in their own home, one of whom had been battling drug-induced amnesia and had been the target of kidnapping by multiple countries and a man she’d known as her father but who had actually killed her parents? As each detail was revealed more and more people were riveted.

Unfortunately for Becca, everywhere she went became a circus. She couldn’t stay in her home as everything was processed, and she was afraid to head to her cabin, so she stayed in a nearby hotel. She couldn’t go to the store or the police station for her many interviews, without being hounded by the press. When the FBI and the MPs showed up, too? All hell broke loose.

There was lots of confusion as to what had actually happened until the police found the recordings in Steve’s office. He was in the habit of recording everything (and erasing at the end of each day: he never wanted their intimate life to be used against them) so they had the whole conversation between Becca and Jon, and then Mitch. When asked if she believed Mitch and his threats, she could only answer yes so many times before breaking down.

No matter where she went: to the grocery or a restaurant or just to get gas: everyone wanted a piece of her, and that was before it came out: that she’d discovered the secret to creating vaccines that would result in the immunity being be passed from father to child. That was when the whole world learned who Becca Liberty was and the ordeal she had just gone through. While it might take a few generations for the world to be immune to a whole host of diseases, there was talk that Becca Liberty had, singlehandedly, changed the face of humanity. Granted, the pharmaceutical industry initially wasn’t too happy with her, but the fact that she’d unlocked the key to understanding the most complex structure known to man, and was able to target and precisely alter DNA, wasn’t lost on them.

Sure, there were those who thought this kind of meddling shouldn’t happen, but their voices were drowned out by the masses.

Add on top of that what happened to her in her own home, that the man who had claimed to be her father had contracted to have her kidnapped and it had resulted in the take-down of a foreign regime, all in search of the wealth that her discovery would create, and no wonder everyone on earth wanted to know her story. There were those who wondered why it was that he’d hired someone to protect her when it was he who was after her all along. It was revealed, though, by others, that Jon had done a poor job of keeping it quiet and because word had leaked out and others in the defense industry had known, he’d had no option; he had to make everyone think he would do anything to protect her.

That she had fallen in love with her protector and that he’d saved her not once, but twice? There was a clamor for her story, in her words.

She never told it, not to anyone. Well, except for the MPs, and the FBI, and the police. There were a couple of news outlets that got the report and when they went public with the information, that only meant news trucks on her street again. She was offered incredible sums of money to have her story told. She didn’t need the money, though, not with what she’d discovered. Anytime she heard tale of a movie or television studio trying to make her story, she sicced her lawyers on them. She had deep pockets.

* * *

Becca decided to leave her beloved Walnut Creek. She didn’t think there would be a way to live there and get past the entirely too many painful memories.  She put her cabin on the market only a few days after the real story broke, before all the news trucks packed up and went on their merry way (they always assumed she’d visit her cabin and wanted to be the first with the scoop). The residents were not pleased when the cabin was put up for sale. It invited too many into the area, too many who only wanted to see one of the places where the storied couple had spent time.

It took time, too long actually, for the cabin to sell, but it did finally sell.

Once her cabin was sold, their house in Walnut Creek was put on the market. Again, too many people came to see where it all happened, where the horror that had been that day took place. There were lots of people who came by the first open house, curious about what had happened and wondering if they’d be able to tell if what had been reported was true. No one could tell. The listing agent had been given strict instructions to disclose only what was absolutely necessary to keep the sale legal, and only tell those who put in a serious bid. It took a bit of time, but the house finally sold to an acquaintance of a friend of a friend, someone who needed the extensive security that had been put into the house.

Before the whole story was known, rumors were rampant in the community that was nestled below the western slopes of Mt. Diablo. Becca was a spy; she’d been experimenting on human test subjects and that was why she’d been targeted; Steve was her handler, not really her husband.

First with each revelation, as details came to light, and then with each transaction, when her cabin was put on the market and then sold and then their home, the rumors grew and everyone tried to get in on the action (I was her best friend, I did her hair, I serviced her car, I…). It would be a couple of years before things would truly settle, but by then the stories that would be told were the stuff of legends…

* * *

_ Almost three years later… _

 

There’s a tiny little seaside community, one that is in the heart of the biotech and genetic world, just north of San Diego. You know the one…

There’s yet another new startup having to do with genetics that just got underway, but you won’t see any VC money being sunk into it. It’s completely self-funded. Supposedly, the founder made a killing when she began licensing her discovery a couple of years ago. And the thing is, there are tons of rumors about this one. Sure, there are lots of rumors that float along this affluent coastal community, but this one has teeth; this one is real: the founder has already changed the world once. Could she do it again?

While she mostly keeps to herself, some thinking her a recluse, there are those who see her down by the beach with a little towheaded toddler, watching him run around, or try to run around to, anyway, his little legs carrying him as fast as they can go, splashing in the surf and building sand castles most afternoons. They giggle and squeal and laugh, collecting seashells along the way.

Periodically, a man with a prominent limp joins them, and every time he does, you can hear his son shouting “Daddy! Daddy! Watch this!” as he scampers alongside the ocean waves, chasing the seagulls or throwing the ball for their German Shepherd, Copper. The mother and father walk behind their son, arm in arm. Most of the time she has her hand on her stomach, much like expectant mothers do. They have grins on their faces as they stroll along the beach, talking about the future and all they hope for their children.

Only if you know what you are looking for will you just barely make out the heavily armed detail watching over this family, intent upon enjoying their day…


End file.
